so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 for probably two years now, mostly for aircraft stuff and occasionally poking around on HF with the direct sampling mode. its fine, it does what it does, but the HF performance is honestly pretty rough and im wondering if the RSP1B is actually worth the jump or if im just going to be disappointed again

main thing i want to do is wideband HF monitoring, like being able to watch a big chunk of 40m or 80m at once and just see whats happening. the panadapter use case basically. i run SDR++ which i really like, switched from SDRuno a while back and never looked back. the RSP1B is like 130 bucks right now which isnt terrible but also isnt nothing

has anyone actually done a direct comparison of the two on HF? im not expecting miracles but the RTL on direct sampling mode feels like im listening through a wet sock sometimes. curious if the RSP1B has noticeably better dynamic range in practice or if the spec sheet difference doesnt really translate in a noisy suburban environment

yeah the difference on HF is pretty real honestly. i had an RTL v3 doing the same thing you're describing and picked up an RSP1B last spring. the dynamic range improvement is noticeable, like you'll actually be able to copy stuff that was just getting buried before. the direct sampling hack on the RTL is clever but its clearly a workaround, the RSP was designed to do HF from the ground up so the frontend is just cleaner

that said your noise floor situation matters a lot. if you're in a suburban area with a lot of local RFI the SDR hardware stops being your limiting factor pretty quick and it becomes more about your antenna and filtering. i run a 9:1 unun into about 80 feet of random wire and the RSP1B made a bigger difference than i expected but i also did some common mode choke work at the same time so hard to fully separate those variables

SDR++ is a good call, SDRuno works fine but it always felt a bit heavy to me. RSP1B support in SDR++ is solid, no complaints there.

if you really want to go deep on wideband HF monitoring the HackRF is worth a look too, wider tuning range and you can TX which is cool even if you probably wont use it much. but its not as sensitive as the RSP on receive, theres a real tradeoff there. for pure monitoring the SDRplay stuff is generally considered better receive performance per dollar than hackrf

the RSP1B for 130 is a decent deal right now tbh