DSO spec confusion

Hello,

I am a software engineer with some theoretical (but little practical) knowledge of electronics. I'm shopping for an inexpensive (< $1000) digital storage scope to use in my software consulting business and for my personal hobby projects. I'm a little confused by the way these scopes are specified, and I'm hoping someone can clear it up for me.

When a scope is advertised as, for example, 60MHz bandwidth, but has a 100 Msa/s sampling frequency, what does this mean? Doesn't Nyquist dictate that the sampling frequency must be at least 120 MSa/s to properly characterize a 60MHz signal?

Also, what about a scope advertised as 60MHz bandwidth, but 1 Gsa/s sampling frequency? What do I get with the additional oversampling?

Most of my work will be with audio signals and digital data at frequencies less than 1MHz, but I will occasionally want to verify clock signals of 50MHz or more. What features and specifications should I look for when shopping for a DSO?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

-- Brett
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: DSO spec confusion
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