so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now mostly for airband and some HF with the direct sampling hack and honestly its been fine for what i do but im starting to wonder if the SDRplay RSP1B or whatever the current one is would actually make a noticeable difference or if im just falling for the upgrade itch

main stuff i listen to is aircraft, some weather sat stuff with WXtoImg, and occasionally poking around 40m when i get bored. the noise floor on the RTL is a bit annoying especially on HF but i dont know if thats the dongle itself or just my setup - i have it plugged into a powered USB hub near my monitor which probably isnt helping

anyone actually done a side by side or switched from one to the other? the RSP1B is like $120 and i could probably stomach that if its a real improvement but if its one of those things where its technically better on paper but you cant really tell in real use then ill just keep tweaking what i have

the SDRplay is genuinely better, not just on paper. the dynamic range improvement is real and you'll notice it pretty much immediately on crowded bands. HF especially - with the RTL and direct sampling you're kind of fighting the hardware the whole time, the SDRplay has actual front end filtering and a proper tuner that goes down to like 1kHz. that said your USB hub situation is definitely not helping you right now and you should fix that regardless

i switched from an RTL-SDR to an RSP1A a couple years ago and don't regret it. SDRuno is a bit clunky compared to SDR# but you can use it with SDR# or HDSDR too so its not a dealbreaker. if you're doing weather sats and airband regularly i think you'd appreciate the cleaner receive

honestly for airband the RTL is probably fine, thats a strong signal environment and the dongle handles it ok. where you'll really feel the gap is HF and anything where you have strong adjacent signals - the RTL's ADC just doesn't have the bits to handle it gracefully and you get intermod all over the place

i'd try moving the dongle to a direct USB port on the back of the machine first and see if your noise situation improves before spending money. also if you havent already stick a cheap LNA or bandpass filter in line depending on what band youre working, sometimes that does more than swapping hardware