Devil in the Details

The Devil's in the Details

The devil doesn't hide in the big stuff - he lives in missed edges, half-seen glitches, and a noisy baseline. Small, intermittent events like a 50 ns spike or a tiny baseline wobble seem insignificant in isolation but can compound down the line, hindering performance or even causing product failures and costly redesigns.

What you don't see, you can't fix. When critical signal details are hidden, engineers are left debugging symptoms rather than root causes - often too late in the design cycle.

In this page, we take a closer look at two common measurement limitations that quietly obscure the details of your signal: events lost during blind time, and signal information blurred by insufficient vertical resolution. We'll explain why these issues matter, how they impact your measurements, and what to look for in an oscilloscope to ensure nothing important goes unseen.

Problem - Flying blind between acquisitions

Blind time is the interval between waveform acquisitions when an oscilloscope is not capturing data. During this time, any signal activity - including rare spikes, glitches, or short-lived transients - can occur without ever being seen.

Intermittent issues don't happen on command. If an oscilloscope spends more time processing and displaying waveforms than acquiring them, the likelihood of catching these events drops sharply. Signals may appear clean, yet hidden problems remain - leading engineers to debug symptoms rather than root causes.

Solution - No blind time

Minimizing blind time is therefore critical. A high waveform update rate keeps the oscilloscope acquiring almost continuously, dramatically increasing the chance of capturing elusive events. When blind time is reduced, engineers gain confidence that what they see truly reflects what's happening on the signal.

Problem - Blurry signals hide critical details

Vertical resolution determines how clearly an oscilloscope can represent changes in signal amplitude. When resolution is limited, signals that should be sharp and well-defined become blurred - small voltage steps merge together, low-level ripple fades into the noise floor, and subtle distortions are harder to distinguish.

Many oscilloscopes attempt to improve vertical detail by switching into special high-resolution modes that rely on reduced bandwidth or slower acquisition. While this can smooth the trace, it often masks fast edges and dynamic behavior. The signal may look cleaner, but important details are still missing - just in a different way.

Solution - 12-bit ADC always

A true 12-bit ADC available at all times preserves fine amplitude detail without compromising acquisition performance. By maintaining high vertical resolution under real-world conditions, engineers can see small variations clearly and separate genuine signal behavior from noise, instead of guessing what lies beneath a blurred trace.

Introducing the MXO Oscilloscope series

The Rohde & Schwarz MXO series — including MXO3, MXO4, and MXO5 — is a new generation of oscilloscopes designed to expose the details that conventional instruments often miss. By minimizing blind time and preserving high vertical resolution, the MXO series enables engineers to capture rare events and observe subtle signal behavior with confidence.

MXO 3 in action.

How it achieves this:

  • Ultra-high waveform update rate that minimizes blind time, increasing the probability of capturing intermittent events
  • True 12-bit ADC available at all times, with 18-bit HD mode for maximum vertical resolution when analyzing fine signal details

 Explore the MXO family to see how each model is configured to meet different bandwidth, channel, and application requirements.

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