[sdiy] Multimeter Quest

[Theo]

Multimeter QuestYou might want to have a look at DMMs from Dynatek for price
performance.
Compared to Flux the Dynateks need a bit more response time,
but IMHO double the response time and half the price is a good deal.

And for the RMS thing, sure you don't want a scope instead?

Theo



----- Original Message -----
From: John Potter
Hello All -
Believe it or not I actually spent several hours searching through the list
archives and reading specs/features on different multimeters the other
evening.  I've got a couple quick questions.
How important is the ability to do transistor hfe testing?  Will my
synth-diy life suck without this.  I saw some conflicting statements in the
archives regarding this topic.
I'm having some trouble tracking a DMM w/ the other features that I'm
concerned with as well as this feature.  If I through out the HFE testing my
options seem to open up greatly.  Other features I'm concerned with outside
of standard IVR measurements are hold, auto/manual ranging, cap, diode, high
accuracy, and cost < $130US or so.
True RMS measurements?  Many of the archive notes I found seemed to indicate
it wasn't all it was cracked up to be but, to me, it kind of seems contrary
to logic to get a highly accurate DMM and then do measuments using a method
that will introduce error.  I guess as long as you've got a sinusoidal
output you could just measure that but what happens when you've only got
saw, tri, square?  How about if you're measuring something like the voltage
output from an Envelope?
As far as "Hold" goes - does it usually Hold at the peak measurement or just
hold whenever you remove the probes?  I guess I'm asking if you need
something w/ Min/Max/Avg for that?
For what it's worth, I've been primarily looking at Fluke and Extech - and
B+K a little bit.
Thanks much - I'm sure I'll have a couple more related questions over the
next couple days.
JP