At last, Siglent's SDS5054X touchscreen DSO...

[tautech]

Hello,

simone.pignatti wrote:
"Here is a screen shot from Bode Plot on SDS5000X".

Why almost same color for amplitude and phase?

Best regards
egonotto

In Bode plot mode up to 3 channels can be used each connected to a different stage of a filter. For each of these channels a frequency response and phase trace is displayed so each pair of traces are grouped into similar colors otherwise it would be impossible to understand all the traces.

Using the same bandpass filter I used in an example of SDS1104X-E Bode plot (before this feature was enhanced in later firmware) in this post:

Simple Bode plot exercise/example.

1 KHz to 30 KHz passive band pass filter.
Components breadboarded from parts on hand.
Based entirely on the circuit example from here:
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/filter/filter_4.html





Should give us something like this:

Here I've used Ch2 and connected after C1 to display the highpass part of this filter.

[Martin72]

New firmware for SDS5000X models.
New functionality added plus enhancements and fixes etc.


Release notes

9. Optimized SPO display

First, THIS is what I call a UPDATE....Rigol should learn from.

Then: see point 9, does it means, that the intensity grade was "corrected" (see dave´s moaning about in his vid) ?

[tautech]

New firmware for SDS5000X models.
New functionality added plus enhancements and fixes etc.


Release notes

9. Optimized SPO display

First, THIS is what I call a UPDATE....Rigol should learn from.

Then: see point 9, does it means, that the intensity grade was "corrected" (see dave´s moaning about in his vid) ?

There have been 2 FW releases since Dave did his vid.

This is 10 MHz @ 10 KHz AM modulation from SDG1032X.
The screenshot doesn't do justice to what's shown on the display where the intensity grading looks more pronounced.

[Martin72]

Having a look again on dave´s vid, the relationship to lecroy is obviously - I like it.
A very nice und useful feature lecroy scopes got are the display modes.
You could divide the screen in two grids, quad grids, octal grids…
(Means every channel could have it´s own "display")

And I wonder whether rigol or siglent offer this too on their greater models.
It couldn´t be a perfomance thing because lecroy offers this since 20yrs e.g. on their waverunner models.

[0xdeadbeef]

Hm, I actually never saw the purpose of that "one window per channel" thing. You sacrifice display size and lose easy means of checking signal synchronization. Useless to me.
Anyway, most of the things I love about LeCroys (always measure from the buffer, control over sampling rate or memory size, storing/restoring the whole system state including all data, data-analysis through WaveScan) seems to be missing in the SDS5000X while even the WS3000(Z) (despite being slow and too expensive) supports all of these features (as far as I recall - I don't use them that often - I think WaveScan is limited compared to a real LeCroy) - along with not reducing bandwidth for lower voltage ranges. I'd be also surprised if the WS3000 shared that siglent quirk about significantly dropping update rate when any kind of interpolation is activated. And since I think that the SDS3000X uses identical SW, the SDS5000X is a step backward at least in some regard.
Still, I might still be tempted buy a SDS5000X if Siglent jumped the bandwagon and offered a "full package" like R&S and Rigol (yeah, the Rigol packages aren't really "full", still) for an interesting price. Like 4-5k€ for full bandwidth and all SW options (I could live without that garbage signal generator and the MSO probes). Plus all of this would be much more interesting if these LeCroy/Tek probe adapters would be sold for a sensible price (like < 200€).

Anyway, about that modulation intensity grading thing: does that new screenshot really look much better than what Dave showed? Being more in the LeCroy than in the Agilent corner, I don't put too much interest in intensity grading, but this sure doesn't look perfect, does it?

[tautech]

Anyway, about that modulation intensity grading thing: does that new screenshot really look much better than what Dave showed? Being more in the LeCroy than in the Agilent corner, I don't put too much interest in intensity grading, but this sure doesn't look perfect, does it?

I just used some random settings to grab that intensity grading screenshot.
Gimme some settings that you'd like to see and I'll do another after I get some outside jobs done.

[nctnico]

Hm, I actually never saw the purpose of that "one window per channel" thing. You sacrifice display size and lose easy means of checking signal synchronization. Useless to me.

It isn't. A trace in a seperate box uses all the bits of the ADC (so has the most accurate measurements). If you put 4 traces in a single screen then you'd typically use less than 1/4th of the ADC resolution. All in all the seperate boxes are not very useful for looking at traces but they are important if you want to make the most accurate measurements while viewing seperate traces.

I agree with you that Siglent should drop the automatic memory length setting.

[0xdeadbeef]

Hm, accurate measurements with an 8bit scope? Honestly, I'm not sure I get this argument. Anyway, I said "useless to me", as in "I find it useless for my purposes". Which doesn't necessarily mean that it's of no use to other people of course. So this is hardly something to deny.

@Tautech: as I said, I'm not even into intensity grading, I just recall seeing other scopes showing less artifacts in this kind of modulation setups. Even the SDS1000X as far as I recall. Then again, I also faintly remember that someone stated the grading on the SDS5000 would look better if the interpolation was switched off (which obviously also significantly increases the update rate as mentioned above). This whole point based display approach is just a bit hard for me to swallow.

[Martin72]

Useless to me.

Mhh….check it out. 

Anyway, most of the things I love about LeCroys (always measure from the buffer, control over sampling rate or memory size, storing/restoring the whole system state including all data, data-analysis through WaveScan) seems to be missing in the SDS5000X while even the WS3000(Z) (despite being slow and too expensive) supports all of these features (as far as I recall - I don't use them that often

The WS3000(Z) uses the same UI as other new lecroy models - Since october, we got a HDO6000 and a Waverunner 9000 at work.
And at the first look, it´s the same as WS3000.
But for real, there are worlds inbetween….
Massive speed improvement, massive more features, including the grid choice or free choosing the channel colour or choosing the performance level....
OK, it´s a little bit unfair to compare, HDO and WR uses Intel i5/i7 platforms with 8GB/16GB RAM....

[0xdeadbeef]

Useless to me.

Mhh….check it out. 

What makes you think I didn't? Actually my 6Zi at work has the annoying tendency to default to a two window mode or so when using either auto setup or resetting to default setup or both - I can't really tell anymore because I hate this multi-window garbage so much that I avoided using either for several years and instead stored some usable default setups. We also have some WS3000 at work but I rarely use them as I have that 6Zi at my desk - and well, they are indeed slow in comparison. Then again, when my colleagues complained about them getting extremely slow or not triggering correctly, I usually found the mistake was on the user's side. E.g. having control over the memory size and always measuring from the sample buffer comes at the price of getting very slow update rates with large memory and slow sampling rate.
So feature wise, I still think the WS3000 is somewhat nice and with the WS3000Z the GUI speed issues should be improved, so this is a scope that I think I could like. Especially at home where the (obviously much superior) "real" LeCroys are just much too loud for my taste. Plus the whole "real PC/Windows" makes them much more prone to PC-ish issues. Actually, my main argument against WS3000(Z) is the price tag.

So I really hoped for the SDS5000X to become a WS3000Z with a much lower price tag that would compensate for some minor limitations. At this very point, there seem to be a bit too many limitations though to be the function/price winner I hoped it would be. Actually I had the chance to buy a SDS5104X for ~4k5€ but letting aside that the circumstances were not ideal, I hesitated after seeing Dave's video while I might have happily paid that price some days before.

[Martin72]

I still think the WS3000 is somewhat nice and with the WS3000Z the GUI speed issues should be improved, so this is a scope that I think I could like

As known, I´ve ordered a WS3024 at the beginning of 2018 to test it for our testfield department.
Because it is "cheap" and got nearly all the well known and used lecroy features.
It´s slow but this would not be a criterium for us.
A k.o. is the buggy behaviour in some cases - IF they´ll fixed them at anytime, it could be a good scope for daily testfield works.
One of the greatest bugs (for us) are the missing measuring gate lines.

So I really hoped for the SDS5000X to become a WS3000Z with a much lower price tag that would compensate for some minor limitations.

I think, the SDS5000 is the advanced model of the SDS3000 vulgo WS3000Z series.
Therefore, the price makes it very attractive and the fact, that it musn´t have the MAUI UI could be a performance win.
I´d suggest to buy some of the 350Mhz SDS5000 models for our testfield, but there was some concerns about for some reasons, E.g. we couldn´t use our AP current probes on it.
For private use, my rigol mso5 is good enough for it´s Money.
If I could/would spend more money, it would be a SDS5000 - I like the R&S RTB2000, the clear display and so on.
But they didn´t have 50Ohm Input and this is what I expecting to have, when I spend about 3000€.

[tautech]

I´d suggest to buy some of the 350Mhz SDS5000 models for our testfield, but there was some concerns about for some reasons, E.g. we couldn´t use our AP current probes on it.

FYI
LeCroy active probe adapters are supposed to be available before years end and Tek probe adapters early next year.

[Martin72]

I know it already (from you in this thread) and if it´s launched, I try to get it with a SDS5000 on loan for testing.

[0xdeadbeef]

I think, the SDS5000 is the advanced model of the SDS3000 vulgo WS3000Z series.

As I tried to illustrate several times, the SDS5000 is not superior to the WS3000(Z) and therefore alot to the SDS3000(X) in every aspect. Not only feature wise but also spec wise.

[nctnico]

I think, the SDS5000 is the advanced model of the SDS3000 vulgo WS3000Z series.

As I tried to illustrate several times, the SDS5000 is not superior to the WS3000(Z) and therefore alot to the SDS3000(X) in every aspect. Not only feature wise but also spec wise.

This makes sense to me. After all the WS3000 runs Lecroy software where the SDS5000 runs Siglent's own software. For sure Siglent has some catching up to do.

[Performa01]

Because of the discussion here

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rs-rtm3004-the-swiss-knife-oscilloscope/msg2827690/#msg2827690

starting at reply #194, I wanted to demonstrate how the noise in the SDS5104X meets my expectations of a properly designed acquisition system.

Base line is that there is the granular noise from the ADC and numeric noise from subsequent signal processing. Which is strictly proportional to the vertical scale, i.e. for example 1V/div should result in exactly ten times the noise of 100mV/div. This noise is independent of the input bandwidth.
Then there is the noise from the frontend, which exceeds the quantization noise of the acquisition system at high sensitivities (= low V/div numbers). Only this noise depends on the bandwidth.

The following graph demonstrates the noise for all vertical gain settings from 2.5mV/div up to 1V/div at three different bandwidths, 1GHz, 200MHz and 20MHz. The noise is shown in LSB instead of mV because only this reveals what’s really going on:


SDS5104X_Noise_LSB

It can be seen that there is no significant difference from 20mV/div to 1V/div and the quantization noise remains constant regardless of the vertical gain setting.

At 10mV/div and below, the thermal noise of the analog frontend takes over and its impact on the digital value is proportional to the vertical gain (= increasing at higher sensitivities) as expected. Only there we can also see the effect of the input bandwidth.

[0xdeadbeef]

Looks like there is a "full package" campaign now for the SDS5000X as well (at least on the Batronix site) until end of March 2020. No price drop and no bandwidth upgrades unfortunately, but you get all the software (!) options for free (SDS-5000X-PA, SDS-5000X-CANFD, SDS-5000X-FlexRay, SDS-5000X-IIS, SDS-5000X-1553B, SDS-5000X-16LA, SDS-5000X-FG). The LA probes and the external function generator are not included.
Better than nothing I guess, but not nearly the campaign that I would have hoped for.

[jemangedeslolos]

The upgrade from 350 to 500Mhz cost 3000+€
I don't see how Siglent could justify giving this upgrade for free.

Imagine those who paid for the 500Mhz version a few weeks or months ago  ?

Im looking almost every day and hope for a price drop for Christmas but It seems that I will have to wait for the SDS2000X+
It is a shame because I have a SVA1015X with a 10inch screen next to a Rigol MSO5000 with a 9inch screen on my bench so I've been sleeping badly lately 
Two 10inch screens will be better for my mental well-being.

[Martin72]

Buy a 10 Inch external monitor for the rigol...

[0xdeadbeef]

I don't see how Siglent could justify giving this upgrade for free.
Imagine those who paid for the 500Mhz version a few weeks or months ago  ?

Somewhat invalid argument since that's the whole idea of a campaign. Look at the offers from R&S or Rigol.
As discussed before, the average profit per item is probably more or less the same during a campaign, but more units are sold.
After all it's not a charity event but a marketing campaign.

[Martin72]

The fact, that all of the benefits are (almost) integrated in the basic model is a winner model for them (and all other Brands who do so).
If you buy one and add options by the way, it´s a benefit for them.
Or if you hooked on a promo, it doesn´t matter.
It´s always a win win situation.
For them, not for you.

[jemangedeslolos]

I don't see how Siglent could justify giving this upgrade for free.
Imagine those who paid for the 500Mhz version a few weeks or months ago  ?

Somewhat invalid argument since that's the whole idea of a campaign. Look at the offers from R&S or Rigol.
As discussed before, the average profit per item is probably more or less the same during a campaign, but more units are sold.
After all it's not a charity event but a marketing campaign.

What were you hoping for ?

Im aware of Rigol and R&S offers.
But the full package R&S offers only concerns top of the line models
So for Siglent would give : SDS5104X + bundle = 8570€net - 45% = 5142€net

The upgrade from 350Mhz to 500Mhz cost more than the SDS5034X
I don't see how Siglent could do that.

The same applies for Rigol.

[0xdeadbeef]

For R&S, the full featured 1GHz would cost 19896.8€ (according to Batronix, didn't validate that) and the reduced price is 10234€. So the price reduction is (1.0-10234/19896.8 ) = 0.4856 or ~ 48.6%.
 
An almost (no LA probes, no external signal generator) full featured Siglent would cost (7567.21€+3014€) = 10581.21€ and the reduced price is 7567.21€, so the price reduction is just (1.0-7567.21€/10581.21€) = 0.2848 or ~ 28.5%.

So the R&S offer is obviously much better. And that doesn't even consider the fact that the R&S bundle contains more features and also the physical LA probes.
Still, applying the price reduction of the R&S campaign to Siglent would yield (10581.21€*0.514) = 5438.74€. That's would be in the price range of the 500MHz model without any additional options.
Note though that the full package price of the R&S brings down the price for the full featured 1GHz model in the same range as the 350MHz model with (only) the LA option..

So again,  the Siglent offer is better than nothing, but it's still pretty much disappointing. I would have hoped for something like 5000€-6000€ for the full package and I guess that would be still above the current average price (I would think most people will buy either the 350MHz or 500MHz model without any additional options).

[jemangedeslolos]

It is more easy to allow big discount when you sell a product with large margin.

As far as I know, the SDS5000X is the cheapest 1Ghz scope on the market.
You can't expect the same discount from R&S and Siglent regarding their price policy.

[nctnico]

It is more easy to allow big discount when you sell a product with large margin.

As far as I know, the SDS5000X is the cheapest 1Ghz scope on the market.
You can't expect the same discount from R&S and Siglent regarding their price policy.

I doubt the cost of the hardware itself will be very different between the Siglent SDS5000X and the R&S RTM3004. The majority of the cost is in the software engineering.