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Author Topic: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers  (Read 16438 times)

vhavrilko

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I have been seeing an increase in SDR availability and wondered what the opinion of this forum is on what the best SDRs are currently on the market.
Also, are there programs that can show a waterfall display for a table top radio like the Icom R-75?

Offline JCMaxwell

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2016, 1553 UTC »
Vince,

The SDRPlay (http://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-014408) is definitely not the best SDR out there, but I have been looking at them because of their value for the price.  In reading about them, I have come across many articles in which they are being used as panadapters for several different radios.  Don't know specifically if the R75 is one of those.

Hope this helps.

JC
IC-R9000L, FDM-S2, Belka DX, HF+ Discovery, RSPdx, IC-R30, BC125AT, PL-880 <- W6LVP Loop

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vhavrilko

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2016, 1809 UTC »
Thanks!  Much appreciated...  I will check it out.

Offline Token

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2016, 1634 UTC »
I have been seeing an increase in SDR availability and wondered what the opinion of this forum is on what the best SDRs are currently on the market.
Also, are there programs that can show a waterfall display for a table top radio like the Icom R-75?

Best SDRs in what way?  Performance?  Price?  Value?  That last would be hard to quantify and would end up, probably, as opinion.

Yes, there are programs that can show a waterfall display for traditional superhets like the R75.  However, that does not make them an SDR.

With a traditional superhet there are a couple of ways of going about it to get a waterfall display.

You can simply take the detected audio into a program like SpectraVue, Spectrogram, fldigi, etc, using the PCs sound card audio input.  This will indeed give you a waterfall, however the width of it will be limited to your receiver passband.  i.e. for many rigs in SSB mode about 3 kHz or less of width.  Some rigs may have a wide filter mode that allows more width, but it is unlikely you will get more than roughly 9 to 12 kHz width.

The other popular way to get a waterfall with a traditional receiver is by using an SDR on the IF of the radio as a panadapter.  For example if your radio has a 10.7 MHz IF you would bring the IF out to the SDR, tune the SDR to 10.7 MHz, and then you would display a waterfall centered around your tuned frequency.  The displayable width of this waterfall would depend on if there was any bandpass filtering in the RF/IF stages of the traditional radio, and the capture width of the SDR.

T!
T!
Mojave Desert, California USA

vhavrilko

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #4 on: March 07, 2016, 1705 UTC »
Token,

Sorry,  I did not specify.  Just looking for general opinions.  Thanks for the info on waterfall displays.

V/r,

Vince

Offline Fred Smith

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #5 on: March 07, 2016, 2202 UTC »
Depending on the IF frequency you might get away with even a cheap dongle.  I use one on a Yaesu radio but first IF is at about 68 MHz. With an IF at say 10 MHz an sdrplay or another with a down converter would have to be used.
FT-920, SDR Play and others. 80 meter doublet/openwire feed, 80/10 OCFD, 400 BOG  NE/SW unterminated

Offline oldradio

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2016, 0232 UTC »
Would the SDRPlay be nothing more than a cheap $20 dongle with an upconverter or is it actually include something better.
I think their is some front end band pass going on which should help quite a bit.

Ken


Vince,

The SDRPlay (http://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-014408) is definitely not the best SDR out there, but I have been looking at them because of their value for the price.  In reading about them, I have come across many articles in which they are being used as panadapters for several different radios.  Don't know specifically if the R75 is one of those.

Hope this helps.

JC

Offline Stretchyman

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #7 on: May 12, 2016, 0558 UTC »
To answer your questions.....

Best SDR, I'd go with anything from; http://www.rfspace.com

Great feature set, the fact that they're Ethernet and NOT USB is a huge plus as can be operated remotely and even switch antennae, maybe not in everyone's remit but most useful!

There is much competition with the best units from all manufacturers commanding a high price but this will be forced down by 'Chinese' competition.


R75 panadapter, well the R75 has NO I.F. out so just stuff the audio into your computer soundcard and use any SDR 'Program'


Str.


'It's better to give than receive' so why RX when you can TX!

                            Buy one from me, NOW!


                                              ;)




'It's better to give than receive' so why Rx when you can Tx!

                                              ;)

Offline dingo31

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #8 on: May 18, 2016, 0740 UTC »
I'm new in this hobby and is hard for my to make a choice for my next SDR after using the rtl2832 and fcd sticks. I'm thinking that my next should by ELAD S1 or S2. Is there a difference in sensibility between these two ELAD releases? Meanwhile what's about RadioJet 1102 from Bonito?

Offline Token

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #9 on: May 19, 2016, 1846 UTC »
I'm new in this hobby and is hard for my to make a choice for my next SDR after using the rtl2832 and fcd sticks. I'm thinking that my next should by ELAD S1 or S2. Is there a difference in sensibility between these two ELAD releases? Meanwhile what's about RadioJet 1102 from Bonito?

The Elad S1 is an older design than the Elad S2, and uses slightly older technology.  The ADC of the S1 is half the speed of that in the S2.  This means that the performance of the receivers will be slightly different, with the S2 having better dynamic range and maybe better sensitivity (although raw sensitivity is seldom a big issue on HF).

The frequency coverage of the S2 is greater, going up to 6 meters (52 MHz), but if your target freq set is only up to 30 MHz that will not matter to you.  Both receivers can go up into the VHF range in undersampling mode.

I don’t think the S1 has the dual DDC mode that the S2 has, and that is very useful.  This mode essentially turns the S2 into two independent SDRs (with reduced IBW) in one box.

I have the S2, but have never used the S1.  The S2 is a very nice lower cost HF oriented SDR.  It performs well and punches above its weight at its price point.  I am not a big fan of the software that is used with the radio.  Don’t get me wrong, it is very capable software, but something about the layout and how things are done just feel klunky to me.  I know other users who love it.

The Radiojet 1102s is a good receiver, with impressive, but not top tier, specifications.  It is not a bad receiver, indeed it is a rather nice receiver, but it does not bring to the table what many people expect and want in an SDR.  The 1102 is not, in my mind, a “real” SDR.  Now, right off the top, that statement is technically wrong, but let me explain what I mean.  

The 1102s is a hybrid radio.  It combines a traditional superhetrodyne design with a DSP.  This means the signal is downconverted to an IF, with filtering and other signal conditioning operations before and during downconversion, and then the IF is digitally sampled.  There is nothing wrong with this approach, many SDRs on the market do something similar.  However the issue I have is the 1102s then only samples 24 kHz of IF width.

So with the 1102 you have no wideband display of signals around whatever you are tuned to.  If you tune to a frequency you see that frequency, plus and minus 12 kHz.

Radiojet calls this approach “innovative”, and would have people think this is unique.  However WinRadio (in their G3XX series) was doing this for years before the 1102s was introduced, and many ham radios have done this (the same processing technique but without the display) for over 10 years.

The take away here might be that although the 1102s is a good single signal receiver, it does not do what many users want from an SDR.  The following is a list of things that most SDRs can do that the Radiojet cannot.  If you want a visual indicator in the form of a waterfall of what is happening across a band this radio just will not do it for you, although it will show you the signal you are tuned to and possibly things immediately (close in frequency) on either side of that signal.  If you want to make an I/Q recording of a bandwidth wider than a single channel (plus a small guard band on either side) this radio will not do it for you.  If you want to receive/record/listen two different signals at one time this radio will not do it for you (unless both are inside the 24 kHz window).  If you want to look at / receive a transmission with a bandwidth wider than 24 kHz this radio will not do it for you.

There are many choices out there for SDRs.  Someone already mentioned RFSpace.  I have several of their SDRs and they are all good stuff.  The Cloud-IQ is a good performer at a reasonable price, the NetSDR is an excellent tool.  The AFEDRI SDR Net is low cost and decent performance, while not the best it is probably the biggest bang-for-buck in HF oriented SDRs.  The WinRadio G3XDDC series is excellent, although the radios are not well supported in third party software.

Keep in mind I am an HF listener primarily, and only do a little VHF/UHF listening, so my thoughts on radios are skewed that way.  I have over a dozen SDRs here that I use regularly, and I have used well over a dozen other models for various periods of time.  If I had to reduce to only two that are currently on the market it would be the WinRadio G33DDC and the RFSpace NetSDR (with VHF/UHF converter).  The G33 is slightly the nicer receiver to listen too, but the NetSDR is the better tool to take a signal apart with.

T!
« Last Edit: May 19, 2016, 1851 UTC by Token »
T!
Mojave Desert, California USA

Offline MDK2

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #10 on: May 19, 2016, 1929 UTC »
^ Bookmarking this page for the time when I'm ready to add an SDR to my collection.  :)
Denver, CO.
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Offline ChrisSmolinski

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #11 on: May 19, 2016, 2011 UTC »
I am another happy netSDR owner, with the VHF/UHF downconverter, which is a wonderful option. I worked with the author of SdrDx to get Wide FM demod working with SCA and RDS signals, great fun for FM DXing.  Operation on HF is excellent, my netSDR and sky loop antenna are my workhorse for pirate radio listening. With the nightly SDR recordings I make, and analysis each morning, I catch pretty much anything audible in this part of the woods. 

I still have an older SDR-14 that I occasionally use, mostly for checking the 48 meter Euro pirate band while the netSDR is occupied recording the 43 meter band.

Token's comments on the RadioJet 1102 are spot on. I really never understood what all the fuss was about. The same money buys you a much more useful and interesting radio.
Chris Smolinski
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Offline dingo31

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #12 on: May 20, 2016, 1010 UTC »
Thanks Token, thanks Chris.  My decision is clear now. Not RadioJet  :D

Offline dingo31

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #13 on: May 22, 2016, 1218 UTC »
Although I said earlier that not radiojet I'm coming back and asking about Radiojet 1305? My actual budget allows me no more than 650 euros, so I'm thinking for newer RJ1305 vs the older Winradio 305e? I cannot see other better choices for that moneys! Your recommendations will give a great help - thanks.

Offline Josh

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Re: Top Five SDRs / Waterfall Displays for Table Top Receivers
« Reply #14 on: June 13, 2016, 0337 UTC »
The good thing is if you just want to feed the If from your Icom rig to an sdr for the waterfall, you can do that with a cheap dongle and free software. The Icom protects the dongle from huge signal levels and also filters the bandwidth the dongle sees, both very good things. That being said, comparing a cheap dongle to the Icom's performance as a stand alone receiver will likely disappoint you due the dongles poor dynamic range.
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