[LAU] Soundcard Oscilloscope

Will Godfrey willgodfrey at musically.me.uk
Fri Mar 23 19:28:46 CET 2018


Thanks everyone for your replies.

I had an idea that the low resolution was a compromise against bandwidth, so
thanks for the confirmation. When I started out dabbling with electronics in
the 1960s, I built a scope from a Practical Wireless design, which had a 2 inch
tube and a whole 100kHz bandwidth :)
It survived many years of service.

I do actually have a bitscope. It's interesting for what it is, but with no
proper attenuator, it's not terribly useful. The vertical resolution is poor
enough to make it pretty useless for checking things like cross-over distortion.

I've look araound for 'real' scopes and the best (at the top of my price limit)
my price range seems to be Siglent Technologies SDS1202X-E.

It's still only 8bit but the traces they show look better than most -
presumably due to clever fft stuff.

This is also very close to the price of a new CRT scope - I wouldn't trust
buying a S/H one. For a start, you've no idea of condition of the CRT until you
switch it on.

Back to possibly using a soundcard, I would be thinking of using my KA6, and put
a fairly simple buffer on the front. I'm not concerned about AC coupling. I can
get better results for DC with a millivoltmenter (of which I have two!).

I have tried Xscope, but it doesn't seem to see a soundcard at all, Not eveing
the crappy on-board one :(

-- 
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.


More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list