The performance of a tunable diode laser (DL) spectrometer is directly determined by the DL qualities and its tunability control. Emission characteristics are very sensitive to current and temperature drifts. In order to obtain a high quality source for spectroscopy, we designed our own liquid nitrogen cryostat containing the DL. Moreover we compared current and temperature control and we found that temperature tuning can be more efficient. We check and demonstrate it by recording SO2 spectra in the 1168–1169 cm–1 spectral region.