I have a basic, cheap, Owon 5032 (I think)oscilloscope. It has a manually set sampling rate (1k,10k,100k,1M and 10M). In most DSOs that I have seen the sampling rate is adjusted automatically as you change the timebase, longer time lower sampling rate, shorter time higher timebase.
Because is a pain to change the sampling rate every time it has been set forever at 1k, when sampling higher frequency waves I always found then unstable, I thought that they were like that and live with them. I actually forgot that it was a sampling setting.
Last night I was watching a youtube clip on capturing two very different frequency wave form together in a scope and up-ing the sampling rate when looking at the lower frequency wave you can zoom and look at the other higher frequency wave. Very simple and trivial, but sometimes you don't think about this. Anyway, this got me thinking if my scope has this feature, remember that I have forgotten that it existed, as it did I played with it and here is my questions:
- why do other scopes change the sampling rate based on the timebase?
- Would it be a problem if I left the highest sampling rate even if I'm sampling low frequency waves?
Sorry for thee lengthy post.
Thanks