11-05-2023, 10:33 AM
I've always said that digital 'scopes complement analogue 'scopes rather than replace them.
For many tasks an analogue 'scope is the best fit, but you can do things with a digital 'scope that you just can't do with analogue. There are other things that could be done on either, but generally, a digital 'scope makes it much easier.
For example, the ability to capture a complex signal and zoom right in to examine it is really addictive. I remember trying to debug some PIC code some 20+ years ago where to look at a serial data stream, I was having to rely on really complicated triggering arrangements and the persistence of vision in a dark room (having first tried my analogue storage 'scope). Today, it would be trivially easy to capture that on my cheap Rigol.
I note that the Owon only has 10k sample points, whereas my Rigol has 24M. This is a serious limitation that takes away one of the biggest selling points of a DSO. That's the sort of figure you'd expect in the 1990s, not now.
There's no doubt that a good analogue 'scope is faster and more intuitive to use, and it's often the best option for many tasks. Yes, DSOs are harder to drive, but if that's the price to pay for the greatly increased functionality, it's more than worth it. I'd say I only use my Rigol between 10 and 20% of the time, but on the occasions I do, it's because I'm doing something that can't be done on an analogue 'scope. Just a case of using the right tool for the job. For example, the other day I was using the averaging function to remove the noise from a THD+N residual, so that I could see the spikes caused by (very small amounts of) crossover distortion that were being lost in the noise when not averaged. Without that, I couldn't have been sure of the mechanism causing the distortion I was seeing (about 0.01%, so 80dB down) - obviously there are many distortion mechanisms in an audio amp.
At work, I put both types at each student position. I do see a reasonable amount of scepticism, but by encouraging folk to use both rather than just sticking with the analogue 'scope, it doesn't take long to convert them. To be fair, a lot were put off by early examples, which would alias for fun, not have intensity grading (pixels were either on or off, thus losing the information that's conveyed by the relative intensity of a complicated trace), and had very limited sample memories.
I've probably only touched on 1% of the functionality of a modern DSO. If you're doing things with microcontrollers, you should definitely consider one. But if you're only doing analogue electronics, then you probably only need an analogue 'scope. That doesn't make DSOs bad by any stretch of the imagination - just not the best tool for the job.
I don't follow the market closely, but I will say that we had a cheap Owon DSO that we bought about 15 years ago. I've no idea how representative it might be of modern Owon products, but our one had a lot of design issues. We got rid of it a long time ago. Today, we all reach for a Rigol instead of the Teks by default. I doubt any of us - myself included - expected that would be the case when we bought the Rigols about 6 years back, especially given our experiences with the Owon. Also scary to think that a dozen Rigols cost a lot less than any of our Teks!
For many tasks an analogue 'scope is the best fit, but you can do things with a digital 'scope that you just can't do with analogue. There are other things that could be done on either, but generally, a digital 'scope makes it much easier.
For example, the ability to capture a complex signal and zoom right in to examine it is really addictive. I remember trying to debug some PIC code some 20+ years ago where to look at a serial data stream, I was having to rely on really complicated triggering arrangements and the persistence of vision in a dark room (having first tried my analogue storage 'scope). Today, it would be trivially easy to capture that on my cheap Rigol.
I note that the Owon only has 10k sample points, whereas my Rigol has 24M. This is a serious limitation that takes away one of the biggest selling points of a DSO. That's the sort of figure you'd expect in the 1990s, not now.
There's no doubt that a good analogue 'scope is faster and more intuitive to use, and it's often the best option for many tasks. Yes, DSOs are harder to drive, but if that's the price to pay for the greatly increased functionality, it's more than worth it. I'd say I only use my Rigol between 10 and 20% of the time, but on the occasions I do, it's because I'm doing something that can't be done on an analogue 'scope. Just a case of using the right tool for the job. For example, the other day I was using the averaging function to remove the noise from a THD+N residual, so that I could see the spikes caused by (very small amounts of) crossover distortion that were being lost in the noise when not averaged. Without that, I couldn't have been sure of the mechanism causing the distortion I was seeing (about 0.01%, so 80dB down) - obviously there are many distortion mechanisms in an audio amp.
At work, I put both types at each student position. I do see a reasonable amount of scepticism, but by encouraging folk to use both rather than just sticking with the analogue 'scope, it doesn't take long to convert them. To be fair, a lot were put off by early examples, which would alias for fun, not have intensity grading (pixels were either on or off, thus losing the information that's conveyed by the relative intensity of a complicated trace), and had very limited sample memories.
I've probably only touched on 1% of the functionality of a modern DSO. If you're doing things with microcontrollers, you should definitely consider one. But if you're only doing analogue electronics, then you probably only need an analogue 'scope. That doesn't make DSOs bad by any stretch of the imagination - just not the best tool for the job.
I don't follow the market closely, but I will say that we had a cheap Owon DSO that we bought about 15 years ago. I've no idea how representative it might be of modern Owon products, but our one had a lot of design issues. We got rid of it a long time ago. Today, we all reach for a Rigol instead of the Teks by default. I doubt any of us - myself included - expected that would be the case when we bought the Rigols about 6 years back, especially given our experiences with the Owon. Also scary to think that a dozen Rigols cost a lot less than any of our Teks!
