• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Which square wave do you think is best...tuning an amplifier

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#41
Yikes! That's a whole different beast and 3 times the price. In Canada the 2204A with 2 probes is $227 and without probes $184, the 2206B is $587 without probes.

Could someone with more knowledge than me let me know if the 2204A is suitable for audio work that we would normally do? If I need to spend the extra for the 2206B I'll have to wait for a while. To me, I think the 2204 would work well....?

I'm also investigating REW as I have that loaded already, not sure what it will do as far as amp tests go, I'm still researching.

Thanks all.
 
#43
kilohertz said:
Yikes! That's a whole different beast and 3 times the price. In Canada the 2204A with 2 probes is $227 and without probes $184, the 2206B is $587 without probes.

Could someone with more knowledge than me let me know if the 2204A is suitable for audio work that we would normally do? If I need to spend the extra for the 2206B I'll have to wait for a while. To me, I think the 2204 would work well....?

I'm also investigating REW as I have that loaded already, not sure what it will do as far as amp tests go, I'm still researching.

Thanks all.
Click to expand...

I have the 2204 as well, I bought that first. It works fine but the signal generator only goes up to 100kHz. That's good enough for most audio-band equipment, and wider-band digital generators are cheap. I just like that Bode plot generator, which relies on the Picoscope's internal SG, and the 2206B can show you potential stability issues in the higher ranges, but the 2204, as a 'scope, is just as good and has plenty of bandwidth for audio purposes.

There are other options out there but the Picoscope is easy to use and the software is free and easy to learn.
 
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#45
rayma said:
The AWG square wave in the 2204A is really only good up to 10kHz, but that's ok for audio.
The sine is ok to 100kHz.
Click to expand...
Thanks!

I'm actually now considering, to start with, REW as I have a good laptop and a Focusrite USB box already, I just need to load the software and make the connections. I can always buy a Pico box if it doesn't work out, but based on the 76 page thread linked above, I think it will work for my purposes.

Cheers
 
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#47
grovergardner said:
I've got a Scarlett. I'll have to try REW. I've also got an old Emu, which is supposed to be very low distortion. I've always wanted to learn how to take distortion measurements. Thanks for the link!
Click to expand...
From what I have read so far you can make freq and distortion and WAY more measurements than just the Pico box. Page 2 of the thread has the meat of what it can do. I have used REW before to tune my speakers but had never thought of it for amp analysis. Cool beans. 😀

Cheers
 
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