I'll throw out an opinion, but I'll leave the door open for the more
knowledgeable among us to shoot it down hard... ;)
If you intend on using it for lots of electronic work, especially digital
circuit development, I can't answer that. I myself permanently borrowed an
"older" scope (circa 1985) from my brother; he ignores it because it isn't
the "latest & greatest," but for me, I'm only interested in audio-range
stuff, and it is FAR MORE than adequate for that.
For what I use it for, I couldn't justify buying a state of the art scope,
but it sure is nice to have around when playing with the synth. I use the
MOTM-940 Patch Panel more often than not to hook the scope in and watch the
pretty pictures. For anyone new to analog synthesis, I recommend borrowing a
scope for a few weeks to play with; there's a weird kind of "feedback," if
you will, that happens when you can connect a visual of the waveform with
its sound, even though of course a scope doesn't tell the whole story in
that regard. But to understand what happens to a waveform as you move a
LPF's cutoff frequency knob, or to see what PWM looks like... it's valuable.
And, of course, for adjusting a VCO's triangle symmetry, what could be
better than a scope? Although the ear, in truth, can do a very good job.
I guess all I'm saying is that if you just want it for audio, you can go
pretty cheap, even grab scopes that engineers consider "so last week"
because the needs of audio are negligible. But if you are an engineer and
want it for advanced work, someone else would have to opine here.
Tech America and places like that sell these "LED scope" kits... have you
seen these? Atrocious resolution, but I have sometimes mused about making an
MOTM-format module out of one. It's basically something like a 20 x 20 grid
of LEDs that will act as a crude scope. The current draw must be pretty
considerable, but it might be cool to have that baby flashing away as the
synth plays... we have some LED fanatics on the list, and I'm surprised no
one has mentioned this idea before, unless a 20x20 resolution is really just
too atrocious to bother with. But use some blue LEDs, and it could really
light up a room!!
-----Original Message-----
From: noisejazz [mailto:
s.f.martin@...]
I am thinking about buying an oscilloscope. There are loads for sale
and just wondered if anyone has any tips on what to look for or
indeed avoid. Is 20mhz enough or will I soon be wanting more.
Thanks for any help
Steve M.