so ive been messing around with a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about 8 months now and honestly its been pretty great for what it is, i can do NOAA weather sat decodes, listen to the local repeaters, poke around on airband, that sort of thing. but ive been reading a lot about the SDRplay RSP1B and the RSP2 and people keep saying the dynamic range and sensitivity are way better especially below 30 MHz where the RTL dongles kind of fall apart even with direct sampling mode enabled.

my main thing is i want to start actually doing more HF stuff, like actually monitoring 40m and 80m for DX activity when im not transmitting, maybe decode some digital modes passively, and the RTL-SDR in direct sampling just sounds... muddy? like theres a lot of intermod garbage especially at night when 40m gets busy. i tried a few different upconverters including the ham it up and it helped some but still not great.

so the question is basically is the RSP1B worth the jump from like $35 to $120 or whatever it is now. or should i just save up for a HackRF if i ever want to transmit. i know the HackRF can TX but its also not exactly a receiver first device from what ive read. anyway curious what people who have actually used both think, not just spec sheet comparisons

had both the RSP1A (previous version) and still have my RTL-SDR v3. honestly the SDRplay is a noticeable step up for HF, the noise floor is lower and you can actually work the crowded bands at night without everything smearing together. the ADC bit depth makes a real difference there, 12-bit vs the 8-bit on the RTL dongle isnt just a spec thing you can actually hear it.

that said i wouldnt recommend the HackRF as a replacement for a receiver-focused setup. its great if you need to do transmit experiments or replay attacks or whatever on 2.4GHz type stuff but as a pure RX device it trails the SDRplay pretty significantly, the noise figure isnt as good and the dynamic range is honestly worse than even a decent RTL dongle in some scenarios. its a different tool. if you want HF monitoring get the SDRplay, if you want a lab toy that can TX get the HackRF, they're not really competing for the same use case in my opinion.

yeah the direct sampling thing on the RTL dongles is kind of a hack tbh and it shows. i went through the same thing, tried the upconverter route too and while it does work better than direct sampling its still got the fundamental problem that youre working with a very limited dynamic range frontend. nighttime 40m will destroy it.

i jumped to the RSP2 specifically because i wanted the two antenna ports and the hi-Z port for longwire antennas and its been solid. SDRuno is a little quirky but you can also run it through SDR# or even CubicSDR if you dont like the official software. one thing nobody really tells you though - even with a better SDR you still need a decent antenna and some kind of band pass or at least a low pass filter on HF or your AM broadcast stations will stomp all over everything. i run a simple homebrew low pass and it cleaned things up a lot before i even touched the SDR settings