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Need educated model/feature advice for oscilloscope for doing high-quality audio

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deephaven:
You could use a USB external audio box like this one http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePre.html which has professional XLR inputs, has the advantage that it's external so won't pick up computer noise, and can be freely moved from one PC to another. Then use some analysing software to do your FFT, distortion analysis etc.


Nigel.

jahonen:
I second the soundcard approach. A scope is an all-round-instrument, it measures pretty much anything but is not particularly accurate or sensitive on almost any frontier. What OP is trying to approach, can only be achieved using an audio analyzer (or good quality soundcard). Haven't actually checked how good results one can get with Agilent 6000-series, but I'd prefer the soundcard if one wants to make distortion measurements for much less than 1% THD.

Regards,
Janne

Franki:

--- Quote from: jahonen on February 25, 2011, 06:58:07 pm ---I second the soundcard approach. A scope is an all-round-instrument, it measures pretty much anything but is not particularly accurate or sensitive on almost any frontier. What OP is trying to approach, can only be achieved using an audio analyzer (or good quality soundcard). Haven't actually checked how good results one can get with Agilent 6000-series, but I'd prefer the soundcard if one wants to make distortion measurements for much less than 1% THD.

Regards,
Janne

--- End quote ---
You're right, I also thought of using an audio analyzer, but itend to not only use it as an input/output comparator, but also to test how output power or incoming HF-noise on the powerline affects audio equipment on the power line. And some minor other test.

Bottom line is, I not only want to know how much noise or THD something has, but what kind of distortion this is (which harmonics and what does the distortion look like) in order to identify where the problem is: bad capacitors/transistors, too much amplification, too much/few filtering of some frequency etc... And the problem with most audio analyzer in the price range up to 1500$ is that they don't have the visualization capabilites a good scope has.

Most usable Audio Analyzers are just too expensive, for example the Agilent 8903B, its successor U8903A or the Prism Sound dScope Series III, price is around 10.000-20.000US$ and much too high
.

deephaven:
How about this: http://tinyurl.com/nxndzk

This shows what it can do: http://tinyurl.com/atcylj

Franki:

--- Quote from: deephaven on March 04, 2011, 01:46:16 pm ---How about this: http://tinyurl.com/nxndzk

This shows what it can do: http://tinyurl.com/atcylj


--- End quote ---
THX, good equipment, but out of budget by an order of magnitude (quick search reveals 10000-20000US$ new, maybe a tenth for a used one).

I'm thinking of buying a high-def external USB/IEEE1394 sound card with external power and known good HF-noise and power ripple shielding/filtering. I just need to search some more to find some models, if they do excist.

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