so ive been using a cheap rtl-sdr v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly poking around on VHF/UHF stuff, some aircraft with dump1090, that kind of thing. works fine for that. but ive been wanting to get more into HF and honestly the direct sampling mode on the rtl is... not great. it works but its clearly not what that hardware was designed for.

been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B and the price isnt crazy but its still like 5-6x what i paid for the rtl dongle. is the difference in actual receiver performance that noticeable? im running SDR# on windows and ive tried SDRuno a little bit but never seriously. a buddy of mine has a HackRF and says its awesome but from what i read the noise figure on that thing is pretty bad compared to a dedicated receiver so i dunno.

mostly wanna listen to shortwave, maybe some utilities, eventually decode some digital modes. not really transmitting anything with it. does the SDRplay actually make HF feel like a different experience or am i going to be disappointed for any reason other than hardware

yeah the jump from rtl direct sampling to the RSP1B is pretty significant honestly. the noise floor alone makes a big difference on HF, youre not fighting the hardware as much. i had a v3 dongle doing the same thing you are and switched to the RSP2 a couple years back and it wasnt even close. the SDRuno software has come a long way too, used to be kind of clunky but its pretty solid now.

the HackRF thing your buddy is talking about — its a great piece of kit if you want to transmit or do wideband stuff, but for pure receive performance its not in the same league as the SDRplay. noise figure on the HackRF is something like 8-10dB depending on band, the RSP series is way better than that. if youre just listening theres really no reason to go HackRF unless you specifically need that transmit capability or the wide frequency range matters to you.

one thing i'd say though, no matter what SDR you get, your antenna is going to matter more than anything. i spent weeks tweaking software and hardware before i realized my random wire was the actual problem.

I went RSP1B about 8 months ago after being frustrated with the exact same direct sampling situation and yeah it's noticeably better. Like not a subtle improvement, HF actually sounds like HF now instead of a noisy mess. The 12-bit ADC vs the 8-bit in the RTL makes a real difference in dynamic range, you can have a strong broadcast station nearby and still pick out weaker signals without everything turning into mush.

HDSDR also works with the SDRplay if you dont like SDRuno, and theres a plugin for it. I personally ended up sticking with SDRuno for HF stuff but use SDR# for VHF because im used to the interface. You can run both fine, just swap the device between them.