so ive been messing with this for a few weeks now and im at the point where i can get the basic remote connection working but the audio path is driving me absolutely nuts. running a K3 at the remote site with a raspberry pi handling the RemoteHams RCForb server side, and on my end im using a windows 10 laptop with the client. connection comes up fine, i can key the rig, S-meter responds, all that stuff looks good.

the problem is im also trying to feed an SDR into this whole thing — RTL-SDR dongle connected to a wideband port on the antenna switch at the remote site — and i want to somehow get that panadapter view accessible remotely too. ive been looking at SDR-Console with the network server mode and wondering if thats the right direction or if theres a smarter way to tie it all together. latency is around 90ms which should be fine for most things but when i try to actually decode anything the timing is just off enough to be annoying.

also separately, and maybe this is a whole other thread, but im curious whether anyone has experimented with linking the remote setup into an Allstar node or something similar. my thinking is i could tie the audio into the local repeater network when im not actively using the transceiver for HF, basically let the remote site do double duty. probably a terrible idea but figured id ask

the SDR-Console server approach is actually pretty solid for what you're describing. i ran a similar setup for about a year — IC-7300 at a remote site outside of town with an RTL-SDR V3 on a separate antenna port, streaming the SDR piece via SDR-Console's network server on a different port from the RCForb stuff. worked well enough that i could have the panadapter open on one screen and the RCForb client on another and they didnt really interfere with each other much.

main thing i'd watch is your upstream bandwidth at the remote site. the SDR stream eats way more than the audio from the transceiver does, especially if you crank the sample rate up. i had to throttle mine down to like 1.024 Msps to keep it comfortable on a 10Mbps upload connection. at that rate the panadapter is still useful, just not covering as wide a chunk of spectrum as you'd want ideally.

as for the allstar idea — i mean it's not crazy. people do use remote HF setups tied into linking nodes, the audio routing gets messy though. you'd basically need something like a virtual audio cable setup on the server side pi to route between the two. doable but debugging it when something breaks at 2am remotely is not fun

90ms should honestly be fine for SSB and even CW if youre not doing high speed. ive worked DX through a remote with like 120ms and you just kinda adjust. the decoding issues youre hitting might not actually be the latency, might be more about clock drift or buffer settings on the audio side. RCForb has some audio buffer adjustments burried in the settings that are easy to miss, worth poking around in there if you havent already.

dont have experience with the SDR side of things in that specific combo but the allstar linking idea is interesting, ive heard of guys doing EchoLink through remote setups which is a similar kind of double-duty concept. whether its worth the headache depends on how much time you wanna spend on it i guess