so ive been running an rtl-sdr v3 for about a year now mostly doing aircraft and some wideband stuff and i got pretty comfortable with SDR# and then started messing around with direct sampling mode to get into HF and honestly it works way better than i expected for something that cost like 25 bucks but ive been eyeing the RSP1A for a while now and the price has come down enough that its not totally crazy

the main thing i keep going back and forth on is whether the preamp and better ADC on the RSP1A actually makes a noticeable difference for shortwave broadcast and amateur bands below 30 mhz or if im just gonna spend the money and think oh ok its a little better i guess. i dont have a great antenna situation either, running a random wire out the window about 30 feet long with a 9:1 unun into a nooelec balun, so maybe the antenna is the limiting factor anyway and better hardware wont do much

anyone switched from rtl to the RSPx series and had an actual noticeable improvement or is this one of those things where you spend more and convince yourself its better

went through exactly this about two years ago and the honest answer is yeah it is better but how much better depends a lot on what you're doing. for weak signal stuff and crowded bands the dynamic range improvement on the RSP1A is real, you stop getting as many intermod artifacts when there's strong broadcast stations nearby. the 12-bit ADC vs 8-bit in the rtl dongles does matter especially on HF where you've got huge signals sitting next to tiny ones

that said your antenna is probably the bigger issue right now. a 30 foot random wire with a 9:1 is fine but it's not great for anything below maybe 10 mhz. if you fixed the antenna and kept the rtl you might actually get more improvement than going RSP1A with the same wire. i'd probably do antenna first then think about the SDR upgrade but if you want to just try the RSP1A the SDRuno software that comes with it is actually pretty solid now, used to be kind of a mess but they've cleaned it up

i have both sitting on my desk right now lol. use the rtl for aircraft because why waste the good one on ads-b, and the rsp1a for hf. the difference on 40m at night with a lot of broadcast interference is pretty dramatic honestly. the rtl would just kind of fall apart with the big signals around, rsp1a handles it way better. hackrf is a whole different thing if you ever want to transmit but thats another rabbit hole