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The only reason you'd need an oscilloscope in a typical studio...and it's a BIG one...is to check stereo phasing on your mixdowns. (...)
Now, the other sort of display I'd recommend isn't a scope...but an RTA. Real-time Analyzers let you see the levels across the entire sound spectrum, and they can come in handy when trying to chase down hard-to-kill frequency "lumps" that're jumping out of the mix. And if you don't have a reliable set of monitors (and why wouldn't you? your monitor chain is probably THE MOST CRITICAL DEVICE in the studio), you can use the RTA to try and fix the discrepancies in the mix that your monitors are causing.

Hi Lugia,

Thanks for your post. I do have a nice set of monitors (DMAX SuperCubes) but this is besides the point of this thread. I'm looking to build an instrument, not to further expand my studio. So why the scope? I find it really useful to see what a filter, modulation or effect does to the waveform. As I stated, I'm a very visual person. I associate high frequencies with sharp angles on a screen. So when I put e.g. a low pass filter with lfo on cutoff frequency on a sawtooth, I see these ripples of higher frequencies come in as the frequency goes up and it starts to form the sharp sawtooth edge. It is the combined experience of seeing this and hearing it happen that gives me the full picture. It's a personal thing, perhaps, but it helps me. Also, of course, a realtime spectrum analyser is very useful for a variety of situations, particularly for mixing. So yeah, I'm looking to get some sort of visualisation on the phone for what the instrument is doing, even when not using it in my studio.