I’m having a blast with both the Digitone and Dave Mech’s excellent tutorials.
Seeing the waveforms in action on his oscilloscope/analyser app really helped FM to click for me, so I wanted to experiment with that a bit myself.
I’ve never used a scope or frequency analyser before, so basically looking for some recommendations on some simple software for that (I think he uses an ipad app).
I’m on a Mac (m1), mostly use Ableton, so plugins for that or something standalone would work.
Happy to pay for something useful, but this is mostly for learning, so don’t want/need to spend a bundle on something professional level.
I did exactly what @anzbert details, early in my synth journey, but dropped it after a day or two (I didn’t care for Ableton). Later, when I started into modular, I bought the Mordax DATA, which is a scope module. I use the scope on it from time to time, as much to understand CV (control voltage) as waveforms (FM and wavefolding), and the spectrum analyzer not at all. I think you are right to view it as a transitional issue and not spend too much (or anything at all).
VCV Rack has a oscilloscope module, free. I think you are correct: I feel that oscilloscopes are fun and very important for education, but once I got the idea of how CV and GATE works, I don’t really use it as much anymore.
If you can do with a plugin, then I think this is one of the best scopes around an d it’s free. It’s basic but works great. I love that you can scale it from very short to very long.