so ive been messing around with my generic RTL-SDR dongle for about a year now, mostly airband and some ADS-B but lately ive been wanting to dig into HF more. been using an upconverter with the rtl dongle and it works ok but the dynamic range is pretty rough when theres a strong AM broadcast station nearby wiping out half the band.

a buddy at the club was telling me the SDRplay RSP1B is a pretty significant jump up for HF because of the 12-bit ADC and the built in filters and stuff. price point is reasonable compared to the HackRF. my question is basically is it worth it or am i just gonna be limited by my antenna situation anyway. im running a random wire out to a tree, maybe 60 feet or so, no matching unit on it. wondering if the bottleneck is really the radio or the front end noise from my suburban QTH.

also does anyone know if SDRuno has gotten any better lately, last time i tried it it felt kind of clunky compared to SDR# but that might just be me being used to one over the other

the RSP1B is genuinely a noticeable step up from the RTL dongle for HF, not gonna lie to you. the front end on those generic dongles is just not designed for that kind of strong signal environment and you'll be fighting intermod all day with a decent antenna. the 12-bit ADC makes a real difference in terms of how much dynamic range you have to work with before things start falling apart.

that said your antenna is definitely also a factor. 60ft random wire with no matching is going to have a pretty wild impedance across the bands so you're leaving signal on the table there too. i'd say get the RSP1B because even on a mediocre antenna its gonna outperform the upconverter setup, and then sort the antenna out whenever. SDRuno has improved a lot actually, the last couple versions added some features that made it less annoying. still not as snappy as SDR# but functional.

tbh i went through the same thing last winter. had the nooelec smart and an upconverter and the MW broadcast bleed was driving me crazy on 40m. got the RSP1B and it was noticeably cleaner. not perfect but way better. one thing i'll say is if you ever think you might want to transmit dont get the SDRplay obviously, thats where HackRF comes in but then youre paying more and the receive only performance on the HackRF isnt as good per dollar as the RSP1B anyway so depends what you actually want to do with it