so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now, mostly doing airband and some APRS stuff but lately i've been getting more into HF and honestly the direct sampling mode on the v3 is... fine. like it works but the dynamic range is pretty rough when theres a strong broadcast station nearby and it just wipes out everything around it.

been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B and the price jump is noticeable but not insane. i know the RSP1B has the better ADC and the preselection filters which should help a lot with that broadcast interference problem. but i'm also wondering if i should just save up a bit more and grab a HackRF even though i know that's more of a TX-capable device and the receive sensitivity isnt as good as the SDRplay stuff.

mostly what i want to do is general shortwave monitoring, maybe some utility stuff like STANAG decoding if i can ever figure out how that works, and eventually maybe some weak signal stuff. running SDR++ and really happy with it, had a few issues with SDR# but SDR++ just feels more stable on my linux box. anyway curious what people who've actually used both think, not just spec sheets

had the RTL-SDR v3 for a while then went to the RSP1B and yeah its not even close for HF work. the broadcast band rejection alone made it worth it for me because i'm about 40 miles from a 50kw AM station and the v3 in direct sampling was basically unusable on 40m at night. the RSP1B handles it fine with the built in filtering.

the HackRF comparison is kind of apples to oranges tbh. hackrf is great if you want to transmit or you're doing wideband stuff like capturing a whole chunk of spectrum for replay, but as a pure receiver the SDRplay stuff walks all over it. noise figure on the HackRF is noticeably worse and you really feel that on weak signal HF. if your goal is monitoring and not transmitting i'd skip the HackRF entirely and just go RSP1B or if you can stretch it the RSP2 gives you two antenna ports and a reference input which is nice for some stuff.

SDR++ is solid, i use it too. only thing i'd say is the SDRplay software (SDRuno) has actually gotten a lot better but i still prefer SDR++ for daily use.

honestly the thing nobody mentions is that a decent antenna and a good common mode choke on the feedline will do more for your HF reception than upgrading from RTL to SDRplay. im not saying dont upgrade, the SDRplay is genuinely better hardware, just that ive seen guys spend money on better SDRs and plug them into the same noisy dipole and wonder why its not magically better lol

that said i do have an RSP1B and it's good. STANAG decoding is kind of a rabbit hole, you'll want to look at Sorcerer or maybe some of the multiPSK stuff, SDR++ won't do that natively but it works fine as the frontend feeding into virtual audio cable and then into the decoder software.