While the SoftRock Ensemble II has performance issues (as do all sound card based SDRs) it is probably, dollar for dollar, the best HF SDR on the market. For less than the cost of a low end portable you get really decent performance.
The problem I have with the Ensemble, and similar, SDRs is that they are often not plug and play, it sometimes takes a little tinkering to get them working optimally. I seldom recommend them as a “first” SDR unless the person using is fairly techy. Particularly a while back, before SDR-Radio and some of the later software, I saw a few people run off of the hobby in frustration. Today it is a little more straight forward.
I have a couple of them here, and often loan them out to local newbies. I help them get the SDR set up on their machine and also get them introduced to HF monitoring, they use the Ensemble II for a while and then decide if they want to invest time/money into the hobby. I think my 2 radios have been through 5 or 6 people so far, and I gave my first one away to a severely budget limited newb a couple years ago, he still uses it as his primary listening rig today.
T!