Audio signal analysis with Rigol DS1054Z

[devriv]

I need to see (as with eyes) about 1-second worth of audio sampled at 8KHz (16-bit PCM if that matters). The object is a single 1-second frame, with distinguishable boundary characteristics. There are multiple frames, all a bit different, it's fine if I can see a randomly (approximately) chosen one.

So far I used Excel to plot the samples, but it is painfully slow manual process (dump samples, import in Excel, plot.)

I was wondering can I use Rigol to capture the analog audio and 'see' it.

I am not a scope expert, so questions that come to mind are:

- general settings for this frequency range
- triggering - manual is OK, but then I'd need 2-3 seconds worth of samples to spot a full frame.

All feedback welcome!

[Bicurico]

Why don't you just use the freeware Audacity software?
Also, I imagine there are far better audio analysis tools for a PC using the soundcard than a regular oscilloscope.

Regards
Vitor

[devriv]

I'm using Audacity for other stuff - it may work here, but the problem is getting the signal in - it's far easier with scope than computer.

To clarify - this all happens on embedded platform, not on a computer: I can get debug output and analog out, but I can't run arbitrary software on it (like Audacity). I would have to put some kind of audio pre-amp in-between.

Plus, scope is much cooler

[rstofer]

Can you bash the embedded code to output a sync signal and use it to trigger the scope in one-shot mode?

[devriv]

Good point - I could create a filter on the computer that receives the debug output, then say NOW, on the computer. But I have no means of I communicating "NOW" from the computer to Rigol. The setup is very limited as it is now.

Instead of expanding hardware for this essentially one-time use, I wonder if I could simply continuously monitor the audio out in manual trigger mode, then push Rigol button to capture 2-3 secs of audio, then observe the signal at leisure. I just don't know how to setup the Rigol thing without spending hours understanding its operation. In particular - is it capable of memorizing 2-3 secs of audio sampled at 8 KHz (which comes to 30-50Kb in 16-bit resolution.) Can it even do such low sampling rate ? (16-32 kilosamples per sec are also OK - the memory requirements go up though.)

[Gyro]

It's worth remembering that you are going to be feeding the audio into an 8 bit resolution scope.