so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about 8 months now and honestly its been great for what it is, i use SDR# mostly and sometimes GQRX on linux when im on the laptop. started with just scanning trunked P25 stuff and ADS-B but now im getting more into HF with the direct sampling mod and thats where things start to fall apart a bit

the noise floor on direct sampling is just... not great. i know its a limitation of the hardware, its a $25 dongle what do i expect. but ive been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B and its sitting around $120 which is honestly not bad. my question is whether the jump in dynamic range and the better frontend filtering actually translates to something noticeable on HF or if im just going to spend the money and be kind of disappointed

i mostly do 40m and 80m listening, some MW DX when conditions are right, and ive been wanting to try some WSPR decoding. anybody gone from RTL-SDR to RSP1B specifically and noticed a real difference? not looking for the RSP2 or RSPdx right now, budget is what it is

yeah made that exact jump about a year ago, went from the v3 dongle to the RSP1B and on HF it really is night and day. the direct sampling workaround on the RTL is kind of a hack and you can tell — strong local AM broadcast stations were just trashing everything nearby for me, the IMD was awful. the RSP1B has actual bandpass filtering and the ADC is just fundamentally better so strong signal rejection is way improved

for 40m and 80m specifically you should notice cleaner noise floor and being able to pull weaker stations out that were just getting buried before. WSPR decoding improved for me too, more spots per session. SDRuno is the native software for SDRplay stuff and its a bit of a learning curve if youre coming from SDR# but it works well once you figure out the layout. some people run the RSP1B with HDSDR or SDR# via the ExtIO plugin which also works fine if you dont want to switch software

only thing i'd say is manage expectations a bit — its still a receive-only SDR, youre not getting HackRF transmit capability or anything. but purely as a listen-to-HF device its a solid step up and $120 is pretty reasonable for what you get

i run both actually, keep the RTL dongle on a pi for ADS-B full time and use the RSP1B for actual listening. the difference on MW DX alone made it worth it for me, i was getting splatter from a 50kW station about 30 miles away that basically made the whole band unusable with the dongle and the RSP1B handles it way better. not perfect but way better