Oscilloscope for Audio Service

[1audio]

What are the aspects you expect to be better? Mechanical durability? Frequency response? waveform distortion? I

 have always liked the miniature HP probes for general work and the vintage Tek probes for working on high voltage- the larger size keeps the operator further from the dangerous voltages and they are pretty sturdy.

[AnalogEngineer]

Howdy
 I also mostly use my scope for analog audio.

As others have pointed out the Siglent SDS1000X-E series has an crazy low noise floor compared to other brands. This makes it a better choice. When doing audio work this comes in handy often. My old Rigol can't pull a power supply audio leakage problem out of a 5mV / diV noise floor. My Siglent can see down to  500uV no problem. Not even my Tektronix 2465B can do that.

For audio the lack of resolution, only 8 bits, is often a problem when calibrating things. But that is why I have a Fluke 289.
A 10 or 12 bit scope would mean reading RMS not so jumpy but I don't see any good options with that so I use other tools.

I have yet to find a scope that is usable for audio range frequency response. The Bode plot is too slow.
I suggest you look at a decent ($200 or better) 192KHz USB audio interface and use ARTA software (about $100 but there is a free limited feature version) instead. I don't use my scope for this anymore once I found ARTA.

[pope]

I have yet to find a scope that is usable for audio range frequency response. The Bode plot is too slow.
I suggest you look at a decent ($200 or better) 192KHz USB audio interface and use ARTA software (about $100 but there is a free limited feature version) instead. I don't use my scope for this anymore once I found ARTA.

When you say "too slow" what do you mean? How slow is slow? And for what bandwidth?

The problem with the audio interfaces is that even the 192kHz ones have limited bandwidth. Theoretically the should go all the way up to 96kHz but I'm not aware of any interface capable of such bandwidth. Most 192kHz have their Fc well below 96kHz.

[AnalogEngineer]

When you say "too slow" what do you mean? How slow is slow? And for what bandwidth?

The problem with the audio interfaces is that even the 192kHz ones have limited bandwidth. Theoretically the should go all the way up to 96kHz but I'm not aware of any interface capable of such bandwidth. Most 192kHz have their Fc well below 96kHz.

To slow meaning it takes 2-3 minutes to do a sweep at low resolution and low sample rate. If you are tweaking or tuning this just doesn't cut it and gets infuriating fast. ARTA can do 131072 sample 192KHZ sweep at well over 10Hz so I can see real time results. ARTA is absolutely fantastic for REAL time tweaks while looking at frequency response, distortion, noise floor, RMS level etc.  It's only limited by the quality and bandwidth of your interface.

Yes it only goes up to about 40KHz with 192KHz sample due to the ADC/DAC filters but the OT said audio where I really never have to look at over about 25KHz. This is a great tool for audio. If you need to get over 40KHz there are other tools to use.

If you need better than this consider a QuantAsulum interface (a lower cost alternative to the Audio Precision).
https://quantasylum.com/products/qa402-audio-analyzer

[pope]

When you say "too slow" what do you mean? How slow is slow? And for what bandwidth?

The problem with the audio interfaces is that even the 192kHz ones have limited bandwidth. Theoretically the should go all the way up to 96kHz but I'm not aware of any interface capable of such bandwidth. Most 192kHz have their Fc well below 96kHz.

To slow meaning it takes 2-3 minutes to do a sweep at low resolution and low sample rate. If you are tweaking or tuning this just doesn't cut it and gets infuriating fast. ARTA can do 131072 sample 192KHZ sweep at well over 10Hz so I can see real time results. ARTA is absolutely fantastic for REAL time tweaks while looking at frequency response, distortion, noise floor, RMS level etc.  It's only limited by the quality and bandwidth of your interface.

Yes it only goes up to about 40KHz with 192KHz sample due to the ADC/DAC filters but the OT said audio where I really never have to look at over about 25KHz. This is a great tool for audio. If you need to get over 40KHz there are other tools to use.

If you need better than this consider a QuantAsulum interface (a lower cost alternative to the Audio Precision).
https://quantasylum.com/products/qa402-audio-analyzer

I've been considering the qa403 for quite a while (since the qa401 actually) but I'm not totally convinced yet. I might wait for the Cosmos DAC  and get both AD and DA converters. We shall see.

I've never used arta. I'm currently using REW, Electroacoustic toolbox and Fuzzmeasure. I might give arta a go.

I also can't fckin decide whether I should buy the 1104x-e or the sds2000X Plus. And now the HD would be coming out....