Electronics > RF, Microwave, Ham Radio

are these any good?

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silly sausage:
just got one of these sdr things,are they any good,ive got it going using sdruno but the interface is a horrid mess, Are there any better programs to use these, sdr uno seems bloody aufull.

shabaz:
(changed subject heading from "are these any good?" to make it relevant).

pienari:
Im using SDRuno & RSP1A and it works really good vs. SDR sharp & chinese R820T2 / RTL2832U systems.

I donno what mess you have made?.


More advanced setting makes it just better but sw is not all what makes sdr shine.

I can use high gain antennas without terrible harmonics.

But.. what frequency range and bw you would need?

pienari:
Here is list for sdr receiver comparison.
https://rssl.lk/2023/07/18/popular-sdrs/

radiolistener:

--- Quote from: silly sausage on January 20, 2025, 10:45:55 pm ---just got one of these sdr things,are they any good,ive got it going using sdruno but the interface is a horrid mess, Are there any better programs to use these, sdr uno seems bloody aufull.

--- End quote ---

This is MSi chip based device, the same as RSP1. I evaluate it as a piece of crap. If you don't want to listen strange noises, to see spurs and to fight with strange behaviors and bugs, just buy RTLSDRv3 or RTLSDRv4 - it has good performance and plain and simple controls with good and stable software/drivers. It's just works as expected and you will never notice all these bugs and issues, like it happens with MSi based devices.


--- Quote from: pienari on January 24, 2025, 10:53:40 am ---Im using SDRuno & RSP1A and it works really good vs. SDR sharp & chinese R820T2 / RTL2832U systems.

--- End quote ---

This is not true, from dynamic range and spurious performance point of view, all MSi based devices are significantly worse than RTLSDR based devices (820T* / RTL2832). There is very aggressive marketing pushing MSi based devices to the less knowledgeable ham radio community. Just don't listen to all this marketing bullshit, but look at the real technical specifications and usability.

Software and drivers for MSi devices also very buggy and full of multi-threading issues and bugs. And it is not open source.

RTLSDRv4 is the best what you can at 200 USD price range, it has the best dynamic range, sensitivity and frequency coverage.

I have RTLSDRv3, RTLSDRv4, RSP1 and FPGA based SDR receivers with dedicated high speed ADC and can compare their performance. I never use RSP1 due to their spurs, noise and frequency gaps issues, it's just lying on the shelf. Usually I'm using RTLSDRv3.

While RTLSDRv4 has better performance I'm using it to listen short wave, where it shine. The rest of the time I'm using RTLSDRv3, it is connected to antenna 24/7, so in such way it reduces probability to burn out RTLSDRv4 input from static/lightning electricity.

The only pros of MSi based devices is 9 MHz bandwidth and a little bit higher upper limit of frequency coverage. However, the benefits of a wide bandwidth are offset by the abundance of spurts and noise. If you really need so wide bandwidth, it's better to use devices which utilize dedicated high speed ADC with FPGA processing. But this is not required at all if you planning to use it as a usual SW/VHF/UHF receiver.

If you're needs wide bandwidth for spectrum analysis, it's better to buy tinySA.

The main cons of MSi based devices are too many spurs, frequency gaps at short wave, low sensitivity at VHF and very annoying issues with noise and gain control. In addition there are a lot of bugs in drivers.


--- Quote from: pienari on January 24, 2025, 11:01:17 am ---Here is list for sdr receiver comparison.
https://rssl.lk/2023/07/18/popular-sdrs/

--- End quote ---

This is marketing bullshit. It says that RSP1 has 14-bit ADC, this is false. You will never get the same performance on it as with fair 14-bit ADC. The root of their lie is that these 14-bit is just due to processing gain, which you get on any SDR receiver. The same you can say that RTLSDR has 14 bit ADC:  (8×6.02+10×log(3200000÷500))÷6.02 = 14.3 bit  :)

As you can see, the table from your link don't have dynamic range and sensitivity specification at all. It just manipulate with marketing numbers, "bits" and "MHz" in order to create the illusion of advantages for illiterate radio amateurs  :)

You can also notice another manipulation on this table it says that RTLSDR has sampleRate=3.2 MS/s. This is false information. RTLSDR ADC works at sampleRate=28.8 MS/s. While 3.2 MHz is bandwidth after applying DSP low pass filter and decimation. While MSi chip ADC works max at 10 MS/s.

If you understand DSP and what is Nyquist border, it explains you why MSi devices have so bad spurious performance in comparison with RTLSDR devices.

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