EEVblog #891 - Siglent SSA3021X vs Rigol DSA815 Spectrum Analyser

hi we're going to take a look at the new sequent SSA a 30 21 X spectrum analyzer it's a nine kilohertz to 2.1 gig spectrum analyzer low-cost how low-cost sixteen hundred US dollars for the base model unit and has a tracking generator option software option which is only a hundred and sixty-nine dollars so we're looking at 70 you know around about 1750 for a 2.1 gig spectrum analyzer with tracking generator brilliant but hey that's not quite as cheap as the RAI goal idea say eight one five which has been out for a well probably a couple of years now and this has been the benchmark bang per buck spectrum analyzer on the market basically nothing could could touch it until this signal came along so this video is basically going to be are comparing the two of these the ROI goal is cheaper at twelve hundred US dollars are with the tracking generator software option for two hundred dollars so it's fifteen hundred dollars for the base unit compared to 70 and fifty here but this is only a one point five gig bandwidth model this one is 2.1 gig upgradeable software upgradeable to three gig whereas the DSA eight one five is I don't believe software upgradeable three gig you've got to buy the higher model unit from the get-go now if you saw my interview with the siglent CEO when he was here in the lab he mentioned that they were about to release the SSA 3000 spectrum analyzer but they had to actually they did release it but then they had to sort of you know do some last-minute tweaks on the thing I believe they changed the front end on it that's the word anyway other don't have absolute confirmation what was changed but they had it just a little performance issue which they had to fix that's why it's been delayed until now and thanks to cheol's at trio test i've got the first one that's landed in the country here i only have it on loan for a few days i only have it for a short amount of time so unfortunately this won't be a full in depth review of this thing because to review a spectrum analyzer they've got so much functionality so much performance in them it's like it would be a two or three hour video to go / and test everything and take many many days to shoot and so anyway I thought it's more worthy rather than do a full independent review just to compare these two as a comparison video so let's go and the segments actually bigger and heavier than the rygar 4.3 versus sorry four point six versus four point three kilos the feeder alright no problems whatsoever it's not going to slide around mm fairly heavy beast but you have the quality of the plastics and the general feel and look of it is just a little bit cheaper than the Rygel the Rygel is just a slightly more polished unit and if we have a look at the back here we've got external wire ten megahertz reference and we've got the ten megahertz reference out we've got the trigger in and we've got the LAN or standard fantastic fan noise on the thing probably on par with the Rygel they're both kind of annoying but the I think the siglent is possibly a little bit quieter or the noises spread over up that it's not as annoying let's just say it's a different sort of spectrum pun intended oh I forgot the USB host as well and the Rygel identical it's almost as if they've copied it and the boot time between the two come on you can do it let's go we don't winner chicken dinner jeez come on cichlid gotta be kidding me let's go well I'm young there we go check this out this is the most remarkable thing about the siglent is that it's a complete user interface ripoff of the Reigle and this is not the first time we've seen this from siglent I probably show you another example after this one minor difference is that the Rygel has seven menu options and the siglent has eight here different and it's got like a a button to go through to a second menu here on the Rygel but the menu options look at this they're practically identical go into the frequency of each one okay look it's practically almost identical the Rygel has usually like maybe an optional to art more but there look there's no difference if we go into the span look this span actually the sequent has an X K log axes here which is quite nice on the span menu the Rygel doesn't have that here but they're exactly the same amplitude let's go in here and have a look Rygel has an auto scale up here but yeah the siglent has like an auto-tuned button here but apart from that look at that a reference level was the same attenuator the Rygel you've actually got to go into the second menu here to get the preamp off and on which is really kind of annoying I much prefer the siglent that it actually has the preamp right here on the main menu but it's like pretty much the same but Rygel a few more options he's got 75 ohm input impedance for video our staff Corrections and you know just a couple of more options but apart from that they've tried to rip it off go into the bandwidth menu here and the resolution bandwidth and look bbw average type okay detector type is here which is different because the Rygel combines the bandwidth and the detector whereas the siglent actually has a detector menu here which is in a slightly different apart from that like the wordings the same or the positions are almost always the same got EMI fuel to type as well for our pre-compliance emi testing and things like that sweet mode here is speed and accuracy mode normal accuracy sweep time a continuous number of samples Auto sweep like I going to the marker menu here it works basically exactly the same thing it's got the four markers like this you know as it might be an option or two extra on the Rye goal occasionally but you know you go into the marker function it works exactly the same as the Reigle the trace function for example works exactly the same the trace mode is really handy but the Signum actually has four traces on here which is pretty handy the Rye goal only has three but it actually works exactly the same way how you actually set it up a little bit complicated so if you've learned how the Rye goal works you can go straight over to the sieglin or vice versa and just use evil one so from that aspect it's it's brilliant okay copy away or all spectrum analyzers should have the same interface at least it's standardized there's a couple of differences in the measurement menu which I'll go through but the Rye goals sort of like it puts it in a buried menu whereas it's just all available here on the main screen on the Sigler which I find better but there's a few more options on the right aisle on the system menu here once again the Rye goal has you know a few more options and things like that very similar like it's got like a demo board for example which is quite nice you can actually buy the demo for that and that's really quite jazzy and it's not showing up on my screen here sorry I had like a screen angle problem here I was viewing the Rye goal from slightly down and if it's you know viewed slightly down you can't see the screen so anyway that's quite jazzy that's for like a RF demo board you can buy for it speaking of which both the ROI goal and the siglent have similar sort of poor issues looking up at an angle at the screen so if you got up on a high bench or something like that not the best there's the same for the siglent and that's yeah there is a reflection issue there but yeah you start to not be able to see the graticule and things like that at the lower angle but you bring it up to the higher angle well straight one and it's just fine and the higher angle is just fine on both of them sorry about the crappy camera work there and from a key layout point of view the siglent very similar to the Rygel the Rygel's got like help and print over here and some preset stuff whereas that's more you know over here I don't like having it over here I like having everything on one side so I think from that point of view the layout of the cichlid is better the screen just goes right over there not this keys on the other side rubbish but you'll notice that these significant differences in the status here the Rygel is very funky with like little icons and things like that show the current status whether or not you've got your preamp turned on and what detector mode and you know everything you're using what sweep mode you're in and the cygwin just has real bare-bones text down here so it's just it's not nearly as refined as the Rygel if I learn the start of the displays up here like this you can see that the siglent is far superior it's got even though it's the same number of divisions everything else it's got a bigger more usable display than the Rygel but hey it's a physically bigger scope you can physically see the size difference comparison there and both scopes have the same Dickie soft power button that barely lights up and it stays on when you turn the thing off which is really annoying it's got USB which is great for powering like you know h-field probes or other stuff or output speakers because it's got a headphone monitor output so you can actually have some powered speakers there so and you know let me practically a rip off of there I got the maximum input for the tracking gents or saan the siglent here exactly the same as to Rygel but the RF input are 50 volts DC maximum is the same but the maximum input power is plus 30 DBM on the siglent and it's only plus 20 DB M on the Rygel and the demodulation options on the siglent I like how it has it all on one menu as I've mentioned before whereas the Rygel you've got to actually go in here and then choose the menu and then go in and do it separately which is yeah other annoying so let's check the performance differences between the two I've got no signal in it's not terminated it makes no difference trust me whether it has terminated or unterminated it's bugger-all difference let's measure the noise floor between these things I've got the Rygel and the siglent identical settings between the boat both the same detector the attenuation is set to zero DB the same reference point and I've used the trace mode here to get three resolute resolution bandwidth of 1 mega Hertz 100 kilohertz and 10 kilohertz on all three the color coding is exactly the same because they're identical user interfaces which is very handy and for a 1.5 gigs span even though the sequence capable of going to 2.1 gig let's just do the same 1.5 gigs span here and at 1 megahertz our BW here we're talking 65 DBM and we're talking 85 on the sieglin here clear winner a good 20 DB better noise floor and then the difference here isn't as large as the reigai when you switch down to 100 kilos we're talking 75 DBM there we're talking minus 90 down here that's minus 70 up there as well and we're talking minus 85 DB m and minus 100 down here so 15 to 20 DB better noise floor and there the singlet is just you know it blows away the rygel no question and you'll notice that the Rygel's not completely a flat across that 1.5 gigs at about 750 Meg it tends to rise a bit like this and we don't see that on the siglent look at that it's much flatter over the range although if you put this to 2.1 gig it does a actually tend to rise to what more towards that 2 gig range but over the same 1.5 gear Ange the siglent has a flatter response and if we do the exact same thing but with the preamplifier turned on that's a PA is there and PA is here so we've got minus 90 and minus 100 102 or something there so you know a good 10 plus DB better on the sieglin minus 100 minus 108 you know we can like a good tend to be not as much of a difference as we got without the preamplifier off but anyway our BW of 10 kilohertz - 120 - 110 or less so a good 10 to 20 dB at least better preamplifier on or off brilliant work Ziggler I tell you what I do like this little lob our graph along the bottom here for the siglent works very nicely and with resolution bandwidth the 1 kilohertz on both and we're looking at about minus 108 on the siglent and about minus 95 on the RAI goal and the rai goal when you chose Auto our sweep time for this it was I going to do 1500 seconds whereas the siglent was going to do about 243 so I've manually set the Rygel to a 250 second sweep time there up until this point we've been operating over the same 1.5 gigs that the Rai goal is capable of doing but this one's capable of higher of course 2.1 gig in this model or our 3 over 3 gig in the higher up our model but we've got 2.1 gig so i've got the full span and you'll see it rises a little bit there but you know not a huge deal it still absolutely beats the pants off there I go I've got the Opry app turned on that's what pa stands there for stands for and I'm in F F T mode by the way this is what the Rye goal doesn't have it doesn't have a suite mode between FFT and you can put it in sweep as well or you can just leave it in auto now if I go in here and change my span to 1 megahertz let's go right in on this puppy here we go now you'll notice that it's telling us we're in FFT mode over here ok so we'll be able to see the difference between FFT and sweep you'll notice how fast it's updating in FFT mode like that if we set to auto it's going to choose FFT in this particular case based on all the current settings we're going to traditional sweep mode there's your traditional sweep mode we've got more detail in there ok for the same resolution bandwidth where's our resolution bandwidth out there I haven't changed it still 10 kilohertz so it's quite wide but you get more detail in there but it's slower update in traditional sweep so yeah choose your poison that's very nice to be able to select that difference fantastic and of course we can just go in there and change our bandwidth let's change it to one kilohertz I um by the way all the controls are quite responsive you see it did hiccup when we went into the menu there but yeah no worry so now bingo we're in there and it's slower of course because we've got a higher a smaller resolution bandwidth figure and well it can go all the way down to 10 Hertz let's see it's going to be pretty slow but check this out look at our noise floor - 140 I don't know - or something thank you very much for playing so this is the performance of this thing is really quite impressive and we're measuring a - hundred and 10 DBM signal here so this will take some time now the ten Hertz resolution bandwidth is an order of magnitude better than the hundred Hertz minimum on the RAI goal so there's just no contest there at all now what I did here is I just snuck in a - one 30 DBM signal so there you go that can easily get that out of the noise no problems whatsoever very impressive and sure enough on the Rye goal not nothing I'm feeding in that same - 130 DBM signal why and I'll show you an example of the resolution bandwidth on the siglent we can get it down to 10 Hertz it's a hundred Hertz minimum on the Rye goal so an order of magnitude better and I've just set up for different our BW is here for a - 70 DB M 1 gig signal here so this is tete the green one here with all the detail is 10 Hertz resolution bandwidth the blue one is 30 Hertz resolution bandwidth which you can't get on the right go as well the purple one here is the hundred Hertz resolution bandwidth which is the minimum you'll be able to get on the rygel and the yellow one here is a horrible 1 kilohertz ibw so you can't see any signal detail in there at all and i won't explain our BW but it has an effect on the resolution of what you can get so you can see that for a given span that we've got here the 10 kilohertz by the way I've got the preamp turned on and I've got 20 averages turned on for the trace mode as well so on the green one here you can see that we've got all this extra detail in here we won't get on the other ones and I can actually our blink that one now so there we go and the blue one we didn't we've got some detail in there that we can see which is really good that's the 30 Hertz resolution bandwidth on the blue one but the purple one there's bugger-all on the purple one so if I blink that blue one look you know you can't there's maybe something in there's a bit of a dick and balls happening there but you know you can't really get any detail down on the balls but if you compare that to the Rye goal here not only is the noise floor are worse of course as we've seen before but the best we can get is a hundred Hertz resolution bandwidth so we can't get in there and see all the detail sure we can set our span and go in but that's not the point the resolution bandwidth of the Signet is 10 Hertz compared to 100 Hertz on the Rye goal and this our purple one here I've just set to 300 Hertz there so the 1 kilohertz 300 Hertz and 100 Hertz so once again the signal beats it you can't you know that 10 Hertz resolution bandwidth could be worth the price of ambition on its own what I've got now is my rubidium frequency standard from the CSIRO it's an absolute Bobby Dazzler I've got that fit into my Marconi 2023 signal RF signal generator and we'll have a look at how accurate the frequency or the internal oscillator is in the RAI goal let's take a look I met I'm generating 1.05 gig signal just because and I've got a 5 kilohertz span on there so you can see that it's off by oh 1 kilohertz there so let's take that out plug it into the Signet what are we get wow that's much closer check that out I mean we can go to a span of one kilohertz there and what a Bobby does laughs look at that that's only out by you know a hundred and hundred and od Hertz or thereabouts much better but of course that's just one sample here but the clock in the siglent is actually specified a lot better siglent actually go to the trouble to give you a decent spec i likey like a fool you know a proper spec on the oscillator inside this thing so I have you know a fairly good confluence it's going to be better than what's in there I goal I've just tweaked the frequency sides bang in the center there just because we can that's a oh there you go I can show you that's the frequency there we go bang on anyway an impressive amount of measurement options we can do channel power occupied bandwidth all sorts of stuff but spectrum monitor I'm really interested in that so let's have a look at this we get this waterfall beautiful waterfall display building up here and we can actually see any change in the any jitter or phase noise in the internal clock because we know we're feeding in a pretty high-quality stable clock into this thing I'd have to get the exact specs for the phase noise of the Marconi generator and the rubidium standard and everything else but anyway it's going to be pretty good and then we can build up and get a map of our to see any deviation in this thing I might have to go in closer actually because I don't think we're going to see a damn thing there and in terms of the measurement setup here there are significant differences between the two the Reigle actually has more stuff but it does not have a spectrum monitor display like the sibling doesn't I love the spectrum under display so I've got harmonic distortion on the rygar which we don't have on the siglent so the only two things the siglent doesn't have which the RAI goal has is Ciena ratio which is the carrier to noise ratio how important that is to you man and the ebw as well which is the same as the occupied bandwidth except it allows your ebw allows you to do it over two separate points but that's the only thing missing but you get the spectrum might you get the beautiful spectrum monitor display which can't be beat anyway I've gone into a hundred Hertz span down here and I could leave it going for longer but there's I can't see any drama with the internal clock in this thing at you know at face value here so yeah that's certainly a pass not sure as you can see a tiny little amount of shift in there just a little something just happened there maybe I was done and I was I'm farting a fly across the room or something I don't know now one of the most important specs on a spectrum analyzer is the phase noise and this is generated by the internal clock basically so we need to know how good this internal clock is and to do this it's going to be a combination of both the internal clock in the instrument and the signal that we feed in so we have to Fein in a pretty good signal and I'm going to actually feed it in from my Rygel DG 4000 series function gen here and the reason I'm using this is because it has a very good specified low phase noise clock it's - 115 DBC and here's the spec for the thing so I'm going to use a 10 megahertz reference here 0 DBM I'm going to feed that in so basically it should not contribute much if anything it will be negligible compared to the spectrum analyzer itself now the phase noise is measured as an offset from the carrier so we've got a 10 megahertz carrier here and we're going to use the specification of 10 kilohertz offset from this now unfortunately the signal it doesn't actually specify the phase noise at 10 megahertz it only specifies it at 1 gig which is 95 - 95 DB C which is relative to the carrier and as you can see it's got around about minus 100 DB M which is because it's a 0 DBM signal that's effectively DBC so minus 100 DBC so it met it meets that spec at 10 megahertz at 1 gig it also meets suspect by the way I have measured it but then the source becomes unknown and it's different anyway that's a an excellent response check that out so the way I've measured this is I've just set a reference art my I got on the carrier here and then I've gone into the marker function and we can choose the noise marker and that gives us the power spectral density which is effectively the phase noise here so at a 10 kilohertz offset you can see that number one point there so it's just measuring the offset there but that is very clean there's no extra Spurs I'm at a hundred Hertz resolution bandwidth here on doing that twenty averages just do I clean it up and for the detector type here it will automatically select other video average I've just got twenty averages set there just to and clean that up a bit but that is an excellent response look there's nothing in there whatsoever but anyway I'm going to use the exact same settings now on the Rygel and we'll be able to see the difference and look at the Rygel this is exactly the same settings everything set up saying the span thirty kilohertz the reference carrier the detector ease are set up the same the resolution bandwidth everything's exactly the same but the response is pretty horrible look at this if we go in to go back into the marker function here and we're getting minus eighty seven DB which is DBC relative to the carrier here I've got the same offset marker at 10 kilohertz and you'll notice that you know this big slope in here this is adding extra spectral noise in here so the clock isn't as good that's essentially what this display is showing this extra noise in here is due to the clock we're feeding in exactly the same signal as we did in the siglent and and the signal went right down here and flat basically so all this extra spectral power in here is being added by the crappy clock inside the RAI go and look there's a couple little couple little side Spurs in there look at those Jesus so this shows a significant different clock spectral result between our difference between the Rygel and the siglent siglent has a much better clock so here's the comparison I just shifted the Rygel up a bit so it has the same ma 0 DBM our reference level there and no contest whatsoever look at this the sequence around about minus 80 and is flat as attack until we get to the carrier here and look look at all this extra slope on here all this extra area under there is extra noise density extra basically noise in the clock that the Rye goal has compared to the cygwin and check this out because the siglent is much lower noisy internal clock look we're actually able to see a couple little Spurs there they would be due to the Rye Gold eg four thousand reference source that's not that's coming from the carrier that's not coming from the internal clock there so very interesting but because our siglent has a much better resolution bandwidth we can go ten Hertz resolution bandwidth and actually get some detail in there here we go it's going to start averaging a little bit nice it's going to drop the noise floor of course that's what the resolution bandwidth can do and once again if we go back to the marker function there we go - 98 but we can just get a bit more detail in where's the other Oh spur there anyway that's an excellent result but in any case the Rye goal does meet its spec of art - 80 we're actually getting in about minus 87 so it is better than expect but that response there that shows that the internal PLL in this thing isn't nearly as good not only the clock but also the PLL as well so it's better the reference oscillator in there plus the PLL doing all this check this out I think I found a bug I just realized that I wasn't using the Delta marker here I thought I had set it up you may have if you were keen you may have noticed that before on the sieglin here and if I set up the Delta marker 10 kilohertz we're not getting even though we're our marker function is our noise marker like this is supposed to give our units per Hertz our power spectral density hasn't got the correct units whereas on the Rygel it will it would do precisely that it'll as you saw in the previous clip it'll work for the Delta marker and the usability of these scopes are practically copied identical function but it doesn't work for a delta what's going on it's got to be a would be a bug surely so I can go in there and set it manually with the cursor I'm using the cursor you can see it move across there but I didn't do that before I didn't I was thought I was using the Delta but I miss that it wasn't actually it was showing up and and from course you get the correct power spectral density here but what like and what no I don't know it does it should work the same as I go exactly the same showing Delta mark up but it doesn't anyway our figure is correct because we've got a 0 DBM eye carrier so everything's fine in this case but yeah bug and in case you're wondering is this a PLL thing inside this or is it the reference oscillator itself well I fit in my external rubidium frequency standard into this thing and we're basically getting the exact same response so all this extra spectral noise in here is got to be due to the PLL inside this thing but of course you'll notice that there's no little Spurs either side are there so it's actually a cleaner reference oscillator and if we feed in a one gig - hundred DBM signal amplitude modulated 10% at one kilohertz got a span of 10 kilohertz there without resolution bandwidth of course because we can down at 10 Hertz and you can easily see the sideburns there plug exactly the same thing into the Rygel and yeah you can kinda see it but not the same detail because a resolution bandwidth hundred Hertz noise floor isn't as good you might be wondering what are these lumpy bits here and here well I don't know offhand so let's just disconnect the input and see if they go away oh we're going to have to work to our clear right there we go back to our average and they're gone so are they a function of the input I don't know for this particular case I'm using my Rygel addysg eight one five but check this out look we can still pick this up oh look at this bring it close it's just the just the coupling of that if we take it right away actually this is interesting I thought it was just maybe the close coupling to that um but the fact is let me actually turn the turn the RF off on the Rygel and know it's still there so we're picking it up we're picking up the one gig signal coming from the right I mean Oh I'll switch it off okay we still see it there and switch it off come on no it's still there what the so check that out let me terminate the import I mean I've got no other one gig signal happening here and we'll go to work clear right and then no it's still there it is still what it's got to be coming internally to this thing although I do have the Rygel turn on directly above it let's switch there I go off and nope the only other thing I've got turned on as my rubidium frequency standard but that's got nothing to do with one gig so what the nope I turned off my rubidium frequency standard it's still there let's go and change the span to one megahertz and see what we get this could take a while actually changed it to 100 kilohertz and no it's still there at one gig that's very interesting some there's some coupling internal although you know we're right down in the noise floor but you can still pick it up so a little bit of an issue there precisely at one gig I've changed my tech type to video and bingo we're gone at the at one megahertz span here so that's really interesting but turn positive peak back on and we'll see if it comes back yeah bingo there it is turn our video bandwidth filter off and it's sure enough it's there you can still see it above the higher noise floor for the one megahertz span there and if we set our center frequency to were two gig then at just over we're getting something there I was actually getting a decent spike there before so that's very interesting now if we set it to say 500 megahertz you know there's nothing there's nothing really there at all it's all hunky-dory but 1.5 gig Center frequency we have some funny business going on there and it's not like I've got the tracking Jen turned on or anything like that I've got nothing else switched on around it it's just the terminated input and so it's got to be coming from inside it's got to be coming from the PLL inside there's a little bit of coupling through to the front end that's certainly something to be aware of if you're right really playing around in the noise floor of this thing okay I'm not sure whether or not this is a pep or not but if I go into the span and just go back try and do full span sweep time is out of range and the sweep time is currently set to auto so it's not letting me go anything above one megahertz span regardless of if I change the frequency or not you know 500 megahertz and span full span well like what's going on sweep times out of range what does that mean I don't get it I don't get it I've got my sweep mode set to auto that shouldn't matter Oh rats um so I what what maybe if I turn the marker off here is that going to work solve my problems nope no what the what the photon and if I try and turn change the resolution bandwidth here tell me RBW out of range the minimum RBW 30 kilohertz when the tracking Jenny's open what's that good to do with anything so I'm buggered if I can get back into this thing like doesn't matter what I do um maybe someone can confirm this as a bug but that's what I'm gonna put it down to until proven that I'm an idiot and just don't know how to use this thing I mean come on what what I can change my center frequency but I can't change my span kidding me getting desperate let's press auto-tune yeah it's play some tunes what's it doing there we go okay we're in like Flynn all right full span there we go we're back all right that fixed it but yeah I don't know but of course if you are set the spend one hundred megahertz like a ham here the noise floor and the rbw could probably go down but it's still not going to get down to where we could see that internal coupling or whatever's happening there so yeah it's only a problem when you're zoom right in at those particular frequencies and if we try out the help menu here with the button it's pretty Spartan but hey it's basically what it says in the manual pretty much like if we use the trace mode here which is quite a difficult and non-intuitive mode to use in my opinion anyway to get exactly the result you want which you've seen that me do previously in this review get four different traces on the screen with different modes and things then if you do clear-rite then it just gives you a short description exactly the same as what's in the manual pretty much like that it gives the Skippy command but once again that's exactly copied from the Rygel there's the same a clear right in the rygar with the Skippy command and yeah that trace function though by the way it works absolutely identical functionality between the two here except the menu is a little bit different you have to go into a second submenu here on the right guy whereas it's all here on the cygwin so a little bit easier to use but the functionality is exactly the same except as we saw before we've actually got four traces instead of three on the rygar so that's it's a little bit nicer on the siglent but identical functionality which is great once again from moving from one scope to the other if you if you if you've learned one you know how to use the other practically instantly and if we hit the mode button here we can actually get a your reflection measurement option oops something's disconnect the dot wha just connect the device under test area warning ADC overload oops yeah I had a problem there do that anyway yes this is a paid option for the thing but I've got a trial license installed so you can actually get time child licenses and you can do reflection measurement let's give it a go I won't fully demo this I'll just have a very quick play around we can from our tracking gin here we can just measure any reflections on our cable so I've got a little T piece in here and if we whack in just a little barrel joiner like that oops Sutton's starting to go horribly wrong there and if we just whack in and unterminated cable into that oh look at that horrible now we can fix that all up again just work our Terminator on there and Bob's your uncle that's a nice fun very useful option for doing that reflection system measurement and things like that but you've got to pay extra for it fair bit thing is like 500 bucks or something if you go into the file menu here you can dump stuff put in a USB key of course but look you can only save bitmaps that's the only type know PNG kidding me what decade is this and for those playing along at home we can go into the system here and we can go into system info and there's the various hardware versions and everything else which I've been playing around with and as you can see I've got the reflection measurement one turned on I've got the emi pre-compliance stuff turned on very handy one of the key uses for like a low cost spectrum analyzer this is to do cheat keep pre compliance because if you want to send if your design the product you send it to a test lab for pre compliance can cost you many many thousands of dollars so it's cheaper just to buy a spectrum analyzer like this a low-cost one with an EMI our test center you can do pre compliance test your product before and have confidence that you're going to pass before you send it to a test house so that's an extra cost option I think it's like my four or five hundred bucks or something but to try those out you can enable a free trial here so I've been here 12 hours left goodness but yes we cannot load options here and whack in the license key and we can upgrade everything I believe we can upgrade to the 3.2 G because this hardware I believe has the full 3.2 gig bandwidth in here so if you can hack this baby and get it for 1,500 bucks it is the bargain of the century and of course we've got a ton more functionality on this that you know I really don't have the time today to spend a door got limit functionality we haven't touched on what demodulation of course which we've got our modulation output here so you know if we picked it put an antenna I know we can pick up an FM signal and demodulate it do whatever so you can get a.m. or FM demodulation 10-year phone that will the you know the headphone jack output the demodulation time you can set all that sort of stuff so you can demodulate signals no worries whatsoever and we've got coupling and we've got all the different types of measurements that we you know I could spend like I could do a video explaining and demoing each one and I have to call this review quits and edit the video and get it up at some point but hopefully um if you want to you know if you want me to demo something like this maybe I can get it back from Charles because he's just down the road here so hopefully if it's available I can get it again and we can have another play around of it because I want to do a teardown of this puppy tomorrow so yes I violated my rule I turned it on instead of taking it apart and there's various other out file save types of course we can do bitmaps CSVs and we can export data and do a whole ton of stuff spectrum analyzers are complex beasts and they've got a ton of functionality in there especially with the modern ones with all their measurement capability and things like that you know it's just mind-boggling and what you get for what is just over $1700 here with the tracking gen because that's an absolute no-brainer if you're going to buy this just shell out the extra hundred and seventy bucks for the tracking gen absolute no question whatsoever it allows you to test fielder's and do all sorts of fantastic stuff so well worth getting that so I hope you found this video interesting comparing the rygaard ESA eight one five to the siglent SSA 3000 x and do you want my opinion haven't been playing with it that long but the siglent much better bang per buck even I think there might be a couple of software bugs I've encounter but generally its responses very fast it's faster than I go here but even with bugs which you'd expect in a product which has just come out I mean the Rygel's been on the market for a couple of years and it's a more mature product so if you want better stability in operational firmware the rygel is probably going to do it I'd expect a few bugs early on in the release of the rygar specially in such a complex beast like this but hopefully they'll fix those they've been fairly responsive to our bug requests and bug fixes lately and things like that so this one I think the siglent much better bang per buck if I was spending my money I'd be buying this one even with you know a few little quirks and problems at this stage just the better noise floor the resolution bandwidth 10 Hertz compared to 100 Hertz order of magnitude difference so useful the much better clock inside this thing much cleaner it's just a more powerful and useful instrument so it's got a it's worth the couple hundred bucks extra on the Rygel but yet we'll see as people start to use these things we'll see how many quirks there are in the firmware if there's any other issues or performance problems and things like that and as we saw that spike has to be investigated internal coupling or something like that but anyway we'll see what we see once this thing gets out there more people get to use it I go on the Eevee blob forum there's already a few users on there who have actually used this thing and done some performance art measurements and things like that which is a really huge value of the forum the eevblog forum by far the best test and measurement forum on the net no doubt about it lots of users putting this through its paces as people get their hot little hands on this but anyway if you want to discuss it Evi blog forum dedicated link down below and as always if you liked it please give it a big thumbs up if you want me to do anything else with it if I can I get it should be able to get my hands on one occasionally again so if you want me to do any more tests and things like that let me know hope you enjoyed it catch you next time so I thought I'd do a quick video showing you how to do some rudimentary pre-compliance testing with one of these line impedance stabilization networks or listen and a cheap bottom of the range Rygel DSA 8 1 5 spectrum analyzer appliance but the other one fewer people know about is our conductive emissions and many products will have to be tested for conductive emissions as well and this is what we'll cover today

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 127,298

Keywords: eevblog, video, spectrum analyser, spectrum analyzer, review, comparison, siglent, rigol, ssa3021X, ssa3032X, dsa815, noise floor, phase noise, power spectral density, measurement, jitter, pll, bugs

Id: gkLciTsjGZg

Length: 43min 53sec (2633 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 20 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Montzterrr]

"Low cost" $1,600... :( I guess I'm not getting one for my home lab any time soon.