Hello all,
I have been a ham for 20+years, and recently became interested in short wave listening. I have decided to purchase an SDR radio, either the Perseus, the Win Radio DDC or the Bonito Radio Jet. None got good reviews on eham, as hams were only using them for ham related uses, not SWLing. I thought naybe you guys could help me decide. I am mostly interested in broadcast, numbers stations and utility listening.
Greg
N4WVE/WPC4GH
I have first-hand experience with many of the SDRs on the market today. I own or currently use the Perseus, SDR-IQ, SDR-14, Excalibur, Excalibur Pro, Excelsior, and Softrock Ensemble II, as well as several professional level digitizers. I have used others in the past, often side-by-side with the ones I listed above. These include the QS1R, NetSDR, Soft66, and a couple others I am sure I have forgotten.
Of the three you list the WinRadio G31DDC is the best performer of the bunch. Of course, performance is not the only measurement of an SDR, your interaction with the GUI is also important. However, in this area I also prefer the WinRadio, I like the Excalibur interface better than the Perseus interface. Not everyone agrees with me on that one
and they are not wrong, it is just a personal preference. The WinRadio G33DDC Excalibur Pro is an even better machine with regards to performance, but it is not one of the SDRs you listed.
The Perseus has one advantage over the other two you list, it can be remote controlled over the Internet. You can also access other Perseus receivers around the World via the same network. This is a very cool feature. The WinRadio G33DDC Excalibur Pro can also be remoted (a $200 option), but not as part of a network with multiple selectable radios around the World.
The Excalibur has the widest DDC bandwidth of the SDRs you quote, this is the recordable spectrum of the device. This SDR is also the only one on the hobby market that allows you to see, in real time, the entire HF spectrum (up to either 30 or 50 MHz, user selectable) on one display while also using the DDC spectrum to listen / monitor specific ranges. This ability is unique and once you use it for Utility listening and finding new stations you wonder how you ever operated without it.
The Bonito Radio Jet is the most limited SDR of the ones you list. It has a DDC bandwidth of only 20 or 24 kHz. This means that you can only realistically look at one station at a time, except for possibly in the case of SSB or CW type stations, you might be able to look at a few of them in that bandwidth. While the Radio Jet might be a very good radio, as an SDR it is very limited, severely limited in several areas that give SDRs advantages over traditional radios.
With regards to the DX Channel operation of the Radio Jet. While the details of its operation have never really been released it appears to be nothing more than a software implementation of a "DX"/ "Local" attenuator setting. You can duplicate the demonstrated performance using a correctly implemented attenuator. Both the Perseus and the Excalibur have such attenuators. My video of the Perseus showing this same kind of signal to noise ratio improvement can be found here
Time Signal Station, WWV, Perseus Attenuator test, November 10, 2011, 0245 UTC - YouTube Notice that the peak signal does not change much at all, but the SNR changes significantly.
For broadcast station SWLing all three would be good performers and it appears the Radio Jet might be optimized for that application. For utility and numbers stations the Perseus and the Excalibur have significant advantages.
T!
