This is going to date me, but... as a physics grad student, my teaching assistant service for one year was the freshman physics lab. One of the lab sessions was the "oscilloscope lab," where we rolled out carts full of (cheap) analog oscilloscopes and function generators.
The equipment was old, so the switches and controls were flaky. There really was no clear explanation of what "triggering" was doing, therefore, what the display really meant. Any explanation would work for only the 1/2 of the class for whom the scopes were actually working. The professor, a theoretical physicist, was lost. I was already an electronics buff, and knew my way around a scope, but could think my way past its foibles.
The lab was a failure. I've talked to people who still remember the "oscilloscope lab" from college.
What I thought, and still think, is we were teaching the wrong thing, which was how to make sense of a futzy machine with a bad UI. Instead, wouldn't it be nice if there were a machine that would let you... 1) Measure voltage as a function of time. 2) Display it. 3) Analyze it (store it, etc.). For most simple waveforms, you don't need triggering if you can have data storage and display instead.
Today's scopes are vastly less flaky, and have storage, but still have the same unintelligible controls, made worse by cramming more functions into fewer knobs and buttons. I'm talking about you, Rigol, though I've bought two Rigol scopes.
Something like this Korg scope might be a very nice thing if it solves, not the electronic or measurement problem, but the UI problem for what it's intended to do. Display audio waveforms and basic analysis in a straightforward way.
Myself, I've gone a different way, which is a homemade measurement board based on a microcontroller, and a Jupyter notebook.
THIS. It might surprise readers but you can hire someone with a BSEE who is fresh out of college and really doesn't "get" any of this. And a good tool and good curriculum material can go a long way toward turning them into functional engineers. This is especially helpful for the ones who cheated their way through school and are now SHOCKED that they are expected to both know and even understand this stuff to do their job.
A good source for this has been the Digilent tools, in particular the Analog Discovery 2[1] in combination with a bread board and some basic components[2]. It is inexpensive enough that you can just buy one for a new college grad and give it to them on their first day. Then expect them to have it available when they are trying to learn the stuff you need them to know. Knowing that everyone has this basic set of gear (or kit as our UK folks like to call it) Means that even on Zoom to a remote engineer you can say "Okay hook up the following bits to your machine and share your Waveforms screen, we'll go over what is going on and why it is important ..."
The best part is that if you later need to remote into a lab bench setup you have the bases skills that are essential to letting you look at what is going on with the thing that isn't working on the bench.
[2] They used to have a great pre-packaged bundle of components for analog work (sponsored by Analog Devices :-)) which was another $100 and had pretty much all you needed for learning the kinds of things they needed to know to be effective.
Triggering was originally designed for repeating waveforms, well before storage scopes were a thing.
Triggering basically means a positive or negative transition over/under a certain level. You can set the level manually, and this gives you a basic left/right (phase) shift on the display.
It's really not a bad UI if you understand what it's trying to do.
Often you want to see what happens after some reference point or - literally - some triggering event like a pulse.
Constant sampling doesn't solve the problem. You still need to work out where the point of interest is. That's fairly simple for a static repeating waveform, but not at all a trivial problem for any waveform that changes over time - as many audio waveforms do.
Wow, this is excellent. I just bought a DSO Nano v3 for use with a modular synth and I'm, unfortunately, a little disappointed. It's just sort of a pain to use with audio stuff. This looks SO much nicer.
I also find it amusing how many of these "DIY" kits only have you DIY the very final, simple assembly (such as attaching a display and putting it in an enclosure), likely to sidestep FCC rules regarding testing of devices.
I feel like you're severely overestimating how much inspection is actually done by customs for consumer imports. I've imported dozens if not hundreds of similar products/devices that could be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and are certainly missing any required certification and never had so much as a peep other than the occasional request for an invoice so they could charge import fees.
Also in this case if you scroll down to the spec sheet the mains voltage measurements are done with a x10 probe, meaning you'd only get ~23 volts out. Obviously that won't prevent user error from leaving the probe at x1, but at that point the device would most likely destroy itself before you can even touch it anyways.
> I've imported dozens if not hundreds of similar products/devices that could be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing and are certainly missing any required certification and never had so much as a peep other than the occasional request for an invoice so they could charge import fees.
Couple of friends got stuff from Alibaba confiscated and destroyed by customs because it wasn't marked with valid CE and RoHS marks. I'm inclined to believe that at least German customs are actively looking for electronics - they're seizing around 250k general electronics plus 250k phones each year [1].
> Obviously that won't prevent user error from leaving the probe at x1, but at that point the device would most likely destroy itself before you can even touch it anyways.
The other scenario would be the user testing a socket and managing to connect scope GND to hot and scope input to neutral. At that point, most of that scope's "housing" aka its PCBs will be extremely dangerous to touch.
Advertising anything not actually complying with the numerous safety regulations surrounding electricity (particularly, IEC 61010-2-030) is so incredibly ignorant that it makes me question the rest of the entire product quality.
The market is littered with outright dangerous electronic devices but customs won't look into them, the volume is just too high. I stupidly clicked on an ad for an 'energy saving device' because I was curious about the scams an boy there are so many. The only one who can protect you is you yourself.
No touch protection as in it's open on four sides, right? With metal through-screws, to boot. As opposed to an enclosed, isolated case. I guess it'd be safe for low voltage measurements?
The device is only really meant for low voltage measurements to begin with, as you can see in the specifications below it's only rated for +-40V inputs. They get away with it because by using a x10 probe (which attenuates the signal 10:1) which means while you can now measure +-400V, the device itself will still only see +-40V and the software will correct the readings.
Such bargains exist because the manufacturers treat workers poorly and skimp on safety - many products contain toxic chemicals, may catch fire, contain sharp parts, etc. There’s also zero recourse should the product cause damage.
Even if that were the case, the extra money does buy extra quality unless the company’s greedy and pockets the entire difference. I’m not aware of that being the case for Korg and looking at the specs it’s clear that the Korg device has many more features. My NTS-1 is produced in Vietnam and has a CE marking - meaning that they guarantee that its fit for purpose and take responsibility for malfunctions.
User "dal" offers a cheaper alternative (indirectly complaining that the Korg one is too expensive), while "blub" talks about that cheaper alternative is cutting corners.
So on talks about the Korg being too expensive, while the other talks about the aliexpress model being too cheap.
I know it could be difficult to wrap your head around, but hear me out: Different people could be complaining about it being too cheap, than the ones complaining about it being too expensive. And both of those groups can have good points about it!
That's way too expensive!!!!
Instead of this crap, buy yourself a proper entry level oscilloscope.
You can get a 100MHz 1GSas Rigol or Siglent for less than €300, which is enough for me locking lasers every day.
Does the "proper entry level oscilloscope" you talk about come with guides on how to use it for music production and other studio tasks? Does it also come with a "flexible waveform generator", spectrum analyzer and tuner too?
If so, could you please provide the link to exactly what oscilloscope you have in mind, as I could buy that instead of NTS-2 in that case.
Both are free and very well-written. I would skip the "Circuit Concepts" series, as it's mostly focused on circuits for analog oscilloscopes. While neither resource is specifically focused specifically on music production, studying them will give you a broad understanding of "what's going on under the hood", which you can apply to music production.
If you really want "here's how you add pink noise using Korg's MS-20 (sold separately)", then I suppose you could just buy their book.
> Does it also come with a "flexible waveform generator", spectrum analyzer and tuner too?
The first two are table stakes for cheapie Chinese oscilloscopes, since... oh, probably at least 10 years ago.
The "tuner" on this one is just a different UI for the FFT/spectrum analyzer. I suppose that could be it's USP, but why not just learn how to use the FFT/SA if you're excited about having that feature anyway?
Sampling rate and bit depth are not mentioned in the specs. Minimum timebase is 50 usec so I guess sampling rate is around 100kHz. Looks like it's an audio ADC doing the hard work, so probably we can get 16-bit or higher from this.
This product focuses on an entirely different market than say Rigol or Keysight scopes. Think of it as an "Audio signal analyzer / generator".
That said though I will still buy it just to fuck with people using a real(tm) scope.
To me, the value lies beyond the hardware, which is likely just off the shelf parts.
The documentation looks really nice, and it’s extremely rare for a company to provide any printed material with their hardware, other than the multi language safety card. Many will just provide a basic how-to support page to get you along your merry way, but this looks superb, and a great way to get people learning. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bulk of development costs lie in that book.
The will also be providing firmware updates, patches and quality enhancements, which are likely to be much better than your open-source project in GitHub with a moderate client base.
Not disagreeing, but what’s the non-overpriced alternative for an affordable oscilloscope with 4 CV inputs?
The Mordax Data is almost twice the cost and takes up space in a modular rack.
I am not familar with audio oriented solutions and it will be hard to precisely match all the audio features and price with electronics scope. But as reference point 200$ is the price point where you can get some of the proper lower end electronics oscilloscopes. Even for low end electronics scopes most of the specs will be orders of magnitude better (except 4 channels and some of the audio oriented features), also better screen and enough engineering budget to create proper case. Lower end 4 channel scopes will start at the 400$ range. You can get some of 4ch Hantek USB based scopes in the 200$ range, although no LCD and must be connected to a computer. Some of the DSO200 series from Miniware are in the 100$, only up to 2 channels and less audio oriented features but much nicer LCD and case. The firwmare for DSO200 is semi open source so it might be possible to make a version which is more optimized for audio usecase. Note some of the listings for DSO200 series mention 4ch but it's 2 analog + 2digital channels
At the end of day for people who will actually use it convenience probably beats other factors and having exactly right set of features, ability directly plug audio connectors, UI and software optimized for audio workflow can be preferable even if comparing raw specs and build quality to electronic tools makes it feels like a cheap DIY/kit or toy.
Or you can buy a used HP 54600, which is a bit large, but doesn’t have a Costco look and feel and comes with a pleasant to use interface, with knobs for everything important and zero latency.
The point of the KORG display is to give visual feedback of audio signals on someone's modular synth without having to fuss with triggering, scaling, channels, and timebase. It's a very narrow problem space and it can be done with something compact and focused for the context in which it operates.
A 100MHz instrument scope like that HP is way overkill for such a purpose and will have an overwhelming number of controls and features. Worse, it will be easy to get it in a state where nothing is appearing and you have to fiddle with buttons to just see a waveform-- this is NOT something a musician wants, not ever, and especially not when live.
What you are saying is true for many scopes, but there's another reason I've mentioned this particular one: you just press the "Auto" button. It's not only easier to use than some digital scopes, it's easier than analog ones. IIRC Auto even takes care of showing the right inputs.
There is the vpme Zeroscope which is ~180€ built and takes 6hp for 2 channels.
Compared to it and the Mordax Data, the Korg offering is interesting.
Personally, I use an Expert Sleepers ES-9 connected to my laptop with VCV Rack scopes and spectrum analyzers. The ES-9 is a great Swiss army knife module, albeit greedy on the +12V rail and somewhat costly. I'm still longing for a proper 4 channels scope.
i’d check the list of hardware supported by sigrok and see if any of it is cheap enough, then you could use a PC for the display which would be much more convenient.
something like the labjack u3 would probably suffice with a bit of signal conditioning. (and learning how to do that would be way more educational and relevant than snapping together a no-solder kit.)
The equipment was old, so the switches and controls were flaky. There really was no clear explanation of what "triggering" was doing, therefore, what the display really meant. Any explanation would work for only the 1/2 of the class for whom the scopes were actually working. The professor, a theoretical physicist, was lost. I was already an electronics buff, and knew my way around a scope, but could think my way past its foibles.
The lab was a failure. I've talked to people who still remember the "oscilloscope lab" from college.
What I thought, and still think, is we were teaching the wrong thing, which was how to make sense of a futzy machine with a bad UI. Instead, wouldn't it be nice if there were a machine that would let you... 1) Measure voltage as a function of time. 2) Display it. 3) Analyze it (store it, etc.). For most simple waveforms, you don't need triggering if you can have data storage and display instead.
Today's scopes are vastly less flaky, and have storage, but still have the same unintelligible controls, made worse by cramming more functions into fewer knobs and buttons. I'm talking about you, Rigol, though I've bought two Rigol scopes.
Something like this Korg scope might be a very nice thing if it solves, not the electronic or measurement problem, but the UI problem for what it's intended to do. Display audio waveforms and basic analysis in a straightforward way.
Myself, I've gone a different way, which is a homemade measurement board based on a microcontroller, and a Jupyter notebook.