so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now and honestly its been great for just poking around, listening to ACARS, doing some weak signal stuff with WSJT, whatever. but im starting to hit the walls on it especially on HF and im trying to figure out if i should step up to an SDRplay or just go all in and get a HackRF.

the thing is i dont really need to transmit. like at all. i just want better dynamic range and coverage below 24MHz without having to use the direct sampling hack which works but kinda feels janky. the RSP1A seems to hit that sweet spot but then the HackRF is only like $50-60 more depending where you get it and at least i'd have TX capability if i ever wanted it.

anyone run both? the SDRplay driver situation on linux always seemed kind of annoying from what i remember reading but maybe thats changed. and does SDR++ play nice with the RSP1A these days because i really dont want to go back to SDRuno if i can avoid it

had an RSP1A for a couple years and honestly for receive-only work its hard to beat at that price point. the dynamic range is noticeably better than the dongle and HF coverage is real coverage not the direct sampling workaround. SDR++ works fine with it now, the sdrplay api driver thing was a pain maybe 2 years ago but its pretty sorted out at this point, at least on ubuntu it just works for me.

the HackRF is a different animal though. yes it transmits but the receive performance is actually worse than the RSP1A in a lot of situations, higher noise figure and only 8 bit ADC vs the RSP's 14 bit. if you genuinely dont care about transmitting i'd skip it. the one time it makes more sense is if you want to experiment with things like replay attacks or portapack stuff but thats a whole different rabbit hole. for just listening and doing ham stuff the RSP1A is the move imo

yeah what he said about the ADC depth is the real thing people gloss over. 8 bit on the HackRF means youre gonna see compression on strong signals way sooner. i actually went RTL-SDR to HackRF and then ended up getting an RSP2 anyway because the HackRF just wasnt cutting it for serious HF monitoring. now the HackRF sits on the shelf mostly.

SDRuno isnt that bad once you get used to it but i get it, SDR++ is just cleaner. works fine with the RSP stuff now