so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly doing ADSB and poking around on the local repeaters with SDR# and its been fine for what it is. but im starting to feel the limits of it, mostly the dynamic range issue when theres a strong local FM broadcast tower about 2 miles from my house. thing just gets swamped and i lose a lot of stuff in that part of the spectrum.

anyway ive been looking at either the SDRplay RSP1A or maybe stretching to a HackRF One. the price difference is pretty significant, RSP1A is like $110 and the HackRF is closer to $350 for a legit one, more if you want the portapack thing. my main use case is receive only honestly — weather sat decodes, some WSPR spotting, maybe poking at trunked systems with DSD+ eventually. i dont really need to transmit anything.

the SDRplay software (SDRuno) looks kinda clunky to me from youtube videos but i know some guys swear by it. anybody run both and have an opinion? also wondering if the RSP1A plays nice with SDR++ because i really dont want to give up that interface, its so much cleaner than everything else ive tried.

had both at the same time for a few months actually. for receive-only the RSP1A wins pretty easily in my opinion. the 12-bit ADC makes a real difference for that dynamic range problem you're describing and it has proper hardware preselection filters which the HackRF just doesnt have. HackRF is 8-bit and it shows when you have strong signals nearby. the HackRF's big advantage is the transmit capability and the wide tuning range going up past 6GHz, but if you dont need TX then youre basically paying a premium for features you wont use.

and yes the RSP1A works fine with SDR++, theres an official plugin in the source tree now, i think it got merged in late 2022 or early 2023. SDRuno is honestly not as bad as it looks in videos once you understand the workspace concept but i totally get preferring SDR++. i still use SDRuno sometimes for the spectrum analyzer features when im trying to find interference but day to day its SDR++ for me too.

yeah the RTL dongles get totally murdered by strong FM. i put a FM notch filter inline on mine and it helped alot but its still not the same as having better hardware underneath. the Nooelec ones come with a small filter kit i think.

dont have the SDRplay myself but my buddy uses one for P25 decoding with DSD+ and op25 and he seems happy with it. runs it through SDR++ piped to virtual audio cable then into DSD+, works solid from what i saw at his place. the trunking stuff can get fiddly regardless of what radio you use tbh, its more about the software setup than the hardware once you have something decent.