so ive been using a v3 dongle with the direct sampling mod for a while now and honestly its been pretty good for what it is, pulled in plenty of stuff on MW and 40m just to see whats out there. but ive been eyeballing the RSP1C for a few months and the price difference isnt insane, around $120 vs basically free since i already had the dongle.

main thing im wondering is whether the ADC quality actually makes a noticeable difference in practice on crowded HF bands. like i know on paper the RSPx series has way better dynamic range and the front end is less prone to getting stomped on by strong stations nearby, but does that actually translate to like a real world improvement or is it one of those things where the specs look great but you cant really hear the difference unless youre doing some very specific thing.

running SDR++ mostly, tried SDRuno once but the interface kind of drove me nuts. also not using any external preamp or filtering right now, just a longwire into a 9:1 unun. setup is fine for casual listening but i keep wondering if the dongle is the actual bottleneck or if its my antenna situation that needs sorting first.

honestly the jump from a v3 to the RSP1C was pretty noticeable for me on 40 and 80m during the evening when the band gets busy. the dongle just starts to fall apart when theres a strong broadcast station a few hundred kHz away, you get all kinds of intermod garbage showing up. the RSP1C handles that a lot cleaner. that said i do think your antenna is probably limiting you more than the dongle at this point, a 9:1 unun into a random longwire is fine but its also picking up all kinds of crud depending on where you live. id probably sort that out first before spending money on the radio end, but if you're going to upgrade anyway the RSP1C is solid and SDR++ works great with it once you get the driver situation squared away.

tried both. RSP1C wins on HF no contest but tbh if youre just casually listening and not trying to dig weak signals out from under broadcast splatter the dongle is probably fine. i use a HackRF for transmit-capable stuff and keep an old rtl around just for wideband scanning, each thing has its place. SDRuno is rough yeah, stick with SDR++ or maybe give HDSDR a shot if you havent, some people like it better for HF work.