In message , Tio Pedro
writes

"Tim Shoppa" wrote in message
...
Charlie.

For filter work, I think you probably want a "sweep generator", not a
"spectrum analyzer". Many of the elements are the same but a sweep
generator is a far less ambitious project that is probably what you
want for alignments and filter design.

Tim N3QE

I would think a good SA with a tracking generator would be
cat's meow. I wonder how a flat noise source would work
in lieu of the TG to plot filter responses on a SA?

A flat noise generator does indeed work well as a wideband signal
source. However, to make sense of the trace, the spectrum analyser needs
a lot of lowpass filtering of the signal (after detection). This is
averages the spiky noise signal. Most modern digital analysers do have
an 'averaging' function but, on the older 'analogue' analysers,
filtering works fine. You would normally the maximum filtering possible
- typically 100 or 30Hz.
--
Ian