The SDG2042X permits frequency entry to fractions of a Hz. like 1.000 000 05 MHz. and the generator will output correctly at this frequency. However the display will only read 1.000 000MHz. Is there any way to see the other digits? It would also be nice to be able to change the fractional Hz. with the spinner knob like all the other digits.
If this is not possible maybe Siglent will consider this in a future firmware upgrade.
Roger
I too was similarly optimistic of seeing such 4 or 5 year old UI issues being addressed, especially after exchanging a few emails with Siglent's European Sales manager last October. Quite frankly, I've been using mine these past 5 months or so only as a plinth to park my FY6600-60M AWG on when I was working on a temperature regulated LPRO-101 Rubidium frequency reference project where I used it as a proxy for the RFS to dial in uHz offsets (usually no tighter than 10uHz, more typically 30 to 50uHz step adjustments - the 1uHz resolution is, quite frankly overkill... for the time being).
It grieves me to see an AWG, capable of being locked to an external 10MHz 'Atomic Standard' so crippled by its woefully inadequate UI as to render it less useful than a cheap toy AWG such as an FY6600-60M cured of of its original frequency instability with a relatively cheap OCXO upgrade with an external 10MHz reference input socket by which to lock the OCXO's phase (typically with a PLL but, in my case, using a frequency injection circuit - don't ask!).
Rather than work my way up to yet another rant, I'll simply paste the bulk of what proved to be my penultimate response in that email exchange over a faulty SDG1032X I'd returned as "unfit for purpose" by way of an extremely jittery internal clock.
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[Quote from an email reply to Siglent's European Sales manager last October]
The answer is yes, your understanding of the test setup is absolutely correct. Although the trigger source is the sine wave output from a cheap FY6600-60M, it has been modified with an OCXO which is injection locked to my GPSDO 10MHz lab reference. The RFS on CH3 provides a 'sanity check' on both its stability and its low jitter by virtue of its complete independence of any of the other signal sources (no correlated behaviour to mask jitter of any sort in any of those other traces).
I've since run similar tests on the SDG2042X to verify that its internal clock reference is only showing the low rate of frequency drift to be expected of any reasonable quality XO whether it's a VCXO or just a common or garden type XO. The one in the 2042 doesn't appear to be a VCTCXO as other users have assumed. In my opinion, it seems to suffer too much warm up drift and variation in frequency with temperature compared to a cheap 50MHz TCXO I'd been able to trim to within 30ppb of accuracy and stability for it to be a temperature compensated VCXO.
However, the fact that my 50MHz TCXO board was used inside my FY6600 as an airflow deflector immediately above the small fan I'd installed into the base of the case to overcome the non-existent ventilation may have helped by reducing temperature variations to essentially just that of the room air, may have given it an unfair advantage over the one used in the 2042X. Do you know whether the 10MHz VCXO used in the SDG2000X series is actually a temperature compensated one or not?
I've been rather preoccupied of late digging around for answers as to why my much modified FY6600-60M should seemingly outperform the SDG2042X in regard of the Sinc pulse waveform. I've had that question quite nicely answered by an EEVBlog member, posting under the pseudonym of "rf-loop" and now have a better understanding of why this should be so.
Even so, Feeltech seem to reached a better compromise between the actual mathematical description of the Sinc pulse and a practical version that can be generated up to a useful maximum frequency than that chosen by Siglent (10 ripples versus the 20 used by Siglent). In effect, you don't hit the Nyquist limit with the Sinc pulse until Feeltech's version reaches a 12.5MHz fundamental whilst Siglent hits that limit at just 7.5MHz when thereafter they start falling apart when aliasing products start to intrude. Incidentally, the Feeltech one isn't really usable at 20MHz as I'd previously stated since, at this extreme, the 4ns clock jitter finally puts in an appearance. In the Siglent's case, you can't see any of the 3.333ns jitter since it has degenerated into a horrible mess long before reaching its own arbitrarily imposed 20MHz limit.
The main reason why I concentrated on the Sinc pulse performance was simply because it was the only pulse waveform that the FY6600 could generate which was free of this 4ns jitter around the 10MHz frequency I was using to compare against other 10MHz sources. It stood out nicely against other sine waveform traces and it was easy to spot which way it or the test waveform was drifting - when both are the same sine wave shape, it's all too easy to lose track at the very slow drift rates I was monitoring (1mHz or less frequency difference - circa a 17 minute period).
The SDG2042X pulse waveform being low jitter means I'm no longer reliant on the Sinc pulse as I had been with the Feeltech AWG so this has become just a matter of academic interest to me now. However, that still leaves the issue of what I (and other users) have noted about just how user hostile the front panel UI is in all of the Siglent range of AWG function generators. I'm sure that if Siglent put their mind to it and look to how Feeltech implemented their keypadless front panel UI, they could gain a considerable marketing advantage over their A and B brand rivals, never mind Rigol.
For a start, picking on the easy target, they could enhance the frequency entry system into a less user hostile interface by shortening "Frequency" and "Amplitude" into their industry standard abbreviations of "Freq" and "Ampl" to make space for another 6 digits of resolution to allow 1uHz offsets to be applied throughout the whole frequency range DC to 120MHz in the case of the SDG2122X models and above, by using the "Universal Knob" to fine tune previously entered values by virtue of making the digit cursor sticky in between setting other parameters or performing other side tasks.
Also, the under utilised push button on the Universal Knob could provide a "remember current user settings" function with a long (1.5s) press similar to the long press function of the channel enable buttons to toggle the output impedance settings between Hi-Z and 50 ohms which I only came across when I read through the whole firmware revision history. As for the rest of the front panel UI features and functions, quite frankly I just don't know where to begin since my day job was not, and still isn't, a UI developer but I feel certain, tricky a task as this undoubtedly is, that there's considerable scope for improvement here.
If they do nothing else, just sorting out the frequency settings interface along the lines I've suggested will go a considerable way to improving their AWG product line's usability in my humble opinion.
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[End Quote]
[EDIT] I just spotted the figure of "6 extra digits" in the third from last paragraph (which is fine for DC to 100MHz) but I must have meant to say 7 extra digits for the 120MHz and higher frequency models. I know abbreviating to Freq and Ampl only eliminates 5 characters but being a graphical rather than a character based display panel, there's sufficient room to modify the format to accommodate the extra 1 or 2 digits required to match or exceed the digit count in the humble FY6xxx's frequency display.
A major concern which I hadn't wanted to go into detail regarding the "Other Issues" with the UI was with regard to the nonsensical way control of the bi-directional external reference port had been implemented. Basically, when running off its internal reference, by default it outputs this low grade reference out of the external reference socket to pollute a daisy chained 10MHz distribution setup or back feed into an amplifier in a star based distribution setup - both are rather nasty situations.
Since you can't get it to accept an external reference source before plugging said source into this socket beforehand, you're forced to connect first and then tell it to use the external reference. There's simply no option to disable outputting its own reference in order to comply with the need for a suitable 10MHz to be pre-connected without this pollution hazard - None!
If you think, after having successfully negotiated this annoyance, you're troubles are over, think again. The obvious act of just unplugging the external reference when you no longer need such precision for any of many good reasons to free up the 10MHz feed, results in a disabling of output to the DUT and an error message about the loss of the external reference, requiring you to manually tell it to go back to its internal reference (and resume outputting it onto the external reference socket -Gahh!). The error message warning is fair enough but the nonsense of disabling its output until you actually take some form of remedial action is totally unacceptable.
As you can see from the above, I had good reason not to go into detail about the "Other Issues" in the UI.
I've attached an image of one of my screen shots that he'd edited to annotate it with his understanding of my description to which my response is in the very first paragraph of the quoted text of the email above.
[EDIT] I've just noticed that he'd erroneously linked the gpsdo to the LPRO-101. That wasn't the case, only the FY6600 was locked to the GPSDO - the LPRO-101 was running completely independently of any other interference.
He did say he was passing on the information to the relevant managers in Siglent's organisation for them to consider but, as far as I'm aware, there's been no sign of any firmware updates addressing these non-trivial issues so I've lost my initial optimism in this regard.
It's a great pity that high profile tech kit reviewers like Dave Jones fail to spot such glaring deficiencies. They have an excellent opportunity to shame Siglent into getting their act together by making comparisons with, of all things, those much despised (even reviled) FY6xxx series of AWGs that Feeltech / FeelElec have sprung upon the hobbyist market these past few years. They could have contributed so much more towards the development of improved UIs on these Siglent AWGs if they had dared to make such comparisons but, as things stand, we have to put up with a quite frankly user hostile UI.
For now, I'm experiencing the rather unexpected situation where the expensive AWG is reserved for the "Less Demanding" work whilst that cheap 'toy' FY6600 is my go to AWG for the more demanding tasks.
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