Reviews
Intrepid MW DXer, Bjarne Mjelde is well known for his arctic medium wave (AM) DXing which presents some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. He has taken time to put the RSPdx, through its paces in this detailed review in his latest blog post
In the report, he concludes that the RSPdx makes a good, inexpensive alternative to much more expensive receivers for MW and LW DX-ers. He also notes that unlike many alternatives the RSPdx can sample the entire broadcast band at once.
The January 2020 edition of the Radio Society of Great Britain’s monthly magazine RADCOM is out and features a review of the new RSPdx by Mike Richards.
Mike summarises: “The SDRPlay RSPdx is a welcome addition to the portfolio and is likely to have special appeal to those with an interest in the LF bands especially below 500kHz. The combination of the new 500kHz filter and the HDR mode gives a worthwhile improvement. ”
RSGB members can enjoy their own copy of RadCom. January 12th update: We are pleased to make this review available here: RSPdxRadcomJan2020
Many thanks to Mile Kokotov in Macedonia who posted this excellent demonstration video showing the power of the new RSPdx for long wave DXing. (You can visit Mile’s popular YouTube channel here)
Over on the Independent SDRplay Facebook group, he posted the following article:
“Amateur Radio is an interesting hobby with many different areas in which every radio tech lover can find himself and enjoy.
In addition to the already known amateur radio disciplines, many hams around the world are interested in the so-called “Broadcast DX-ing”.
They use radio receivers to “hunt” distant commercial radio stations on long waves (LW), medium waves (MW), short waves (HF) and very short waves (VHF).
In this video I will show you the “hunting” of long distance commercial radio stations on Long Waves (LW).
Every radio amateur knows that the reception of low frequencies (long wavelengths) is a particularly big challenge because there are a number of RF interference, atmospheric interference and industrial interference (man made RF-noise).
If anyone doesn’t believe it, he can try to catch some of these radio stations that I recorded on this video. Although their signals are relatively strong, try it out, and you’ll find that reception is not simplistic at all, even if you have a large external antenna and a modern radio receiver.
In this video I am using the newest model of SDR receiver from SDRplay (RSPdx model), and the antenna is home-made active mini-whip antenna with two transistors, mounted on a 6-meter high telescopic plastic mast.
The software is SDRuno from the same company, which together with the aforementioned SDR receiver make a real miracle for receiving in frequency range from 1 kHz up to 2000 MHz.
The large number of DSP plus HDR features and predefined filters, which can be manually adjusted to the specific reception conditions, allow high quality reception of distant radio signals that will impress even the most demanding DX-ers.
Watch the video and see for yourself. 73!”
Over on the SWLing Post Blog, Thomas Witherspoon has published a detailed review of the RSPdx in action up against several far more expensive SDRs.
Thomas summarises by saying “The RSPdx is now in the league of some of the finest HF receivers in my arsenal.”
You can read his full review here
As we get closer to being able to ship the first RSPdx production units, YouTuber Clint from “Oxford Shortwave” tries out this latest addition to the SDRplay family of RSPs.
Clint spends much of the year travelling the world and uses the opportunity to hunt Medium wave DX signals. He also writes articles for magazines including Radio User here in the UK.
Take a look at these recordings he made from here in the UK:
Over on Youtube, Rob aka “SevenFortyOne” has released a very nice video talking through some of the features of the RSPdx which will be on sale later in November 2019. He includes some demonstrations of it in action, picking up some longwave broadcast stations from across the Atlantic:
Youtuber Mile, Z33T has one of the few advanced samples of the new RSP2pro replacement – the RSPdx which will begin shipping later in November 2019.
He writes “Today I have received the new SDR receiver from SDRplay: the RSPdx, and was eager to turn it on and do some tests receiving on HF and VLF. Although at the moment my mini-whip antenna is not operational, I have connected some 20 meters wire as an antenna and start listening on VLF, LW, MW and HF… I have to say that SDRplay team did a good job with this SDR-receiver, putting better filters and redesigning front-end to improve dynamic range and enhance overall performance in relation to its predecessors RSP2 and RSP2pro. The new RSPdx is very good indeed. Especially on HF and below.”
Over on the SDRplay forum, Paul NN4F shares his results where he compares the LF (Longwave) performance of the RSPdx with a number of popular SDRs.
He writes:
“Ok as some of you may know, I started the facebook group for SDRPlay as an unofficial group, then I started working for ELAD, but I continued to be a tester for SDRPlay, over the past few years, I’ve managed to gather a small collection of SDR’s , all the SDRPlay Range from the 1 to the latest RSPdx, and obviously all the ELAD Radios, well I do work for them… 🙂 and a few more, including the revered Perseus.
Last night the LW signals work amazing here, so I decided to do a comparison test, trying not to be biased towards Elad, but they are in a different price range, the next step up from SDRPlay SDR’s My Location is just outside of Charleston, SC in the USA, and the target station was Medi1 out of Morocco on 171kHz
All signals just above the noise floor,
Perseus Just about see the signal, audio is just about readable,
Airspy HF+ barely see the signal, can tell audio is there but can’t make it out.
LimeSDR hmmm joke waste of my money
Elad S2 just about hear and see the station, readable
RSP1 Nothing
RSP1a just about hear and see, just about readable almost as good as the Perseus
RSPDuo Similar to RSP1a
RSP2Pro worse than 1a to be expected I guess
RSPdx good signal and almost perfectly readable
Elad S3 just a wee tad better than the RSPdx, clear audio ($800 more)
Elad DuoR using SW2 about on par with RSPdx ($700 more)
Using 120ft longwire via a 9:1 grounded, couldn’t compare S3 in Uno as extio’s are not available yet (Radio isn’t publicly available yet)…all tested at about 500khz Bandwidth or as close to. I do have better antennas but this was the setup at the time
RSPdx was in HDR mode LW button, then improved signal by using LIF 1.536mhz at 16 decimation 200khz and it was that was closest to Elad-S3 and better than the RSPDuo
All with noise floor around s5, signal showing around s6-8
So in order of best to worst
Elad-S3, RSPdx, Elad DuoR, Elad-S2(add-on filters not used), Perseus, (RSP1a, RSPDuo Both about same) Elad-S1, Airspy HF+, RSP1, LimeSDR
This isn’t a LAB grade test, it was made using the MK1 Brain, Eyes and Ears, We could go into details, but whats 0.1 of a dB between friends…..and if you can’t hear the station, what’s the point of all the noise figures…
Pic is the RSPdx using latest 1.33 SDRUno using HDR mode on Antenna C”
Over on the Tech Minds YouTube channel, Matt reviews the RSPdx:
Here is a neat demonstration of how well the RSPdx was working during the recent CQWW contest with an amateur station in eastern Canada being well received in the UK. It also shows the power of having a visual representation of the activity during a contest:
In the coming weeks, links to more demos and articles relating the RSPdx will be added to our apps and support catalogue: https://sdrplay.com/apps-catalogue/
The current schedule is for RSPdx units to be available from around 22nd November – either direct from this website (click on purchase) or from our authorised channel partners and resellers: https://sdrplay.com/distributors/
Andrew Barron, author of the very popular book “Software Defined Radio” has written a new review of the RSP1A and SDRuno:
Click on the picture above to read his review. In it he says: “…the RSP1A has several notable improvements especially the front end and broadcast band notch filters. The new release of SDRuno is a huge improvement over the earlier versions. I like that you can click a band button and see the whole band and it has many features that are not included in other software such as Stereo FM with RDS, Tmate, CAT, and OmniRig control. The RSP1A is excellent value for money and probably the best wideband SDR on the market.”
Andrew’s book “Software Defined Radio” can be purchased from the RSGB at: http://www.rsgbshop.org/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_What_s_New_26.html
