A question for you more technically proficient SWLs and DXers: How do the SDRs rate against radios like the Drake R8, Icom R75, and the more intense radios like the ones mentioned here (Watkins-Johnson, Japan NRC, Racal, etc.).
I ask this because it seems that most of the high tech DXers with the big antenna farms (like the MWDXers in Northern Scandinavia that seem to use beverages and SDRs), or the high performance outdoor loops, seem to use SDRs instead of the receivers mentioned here.
Maybe it's the cost?
It is also a case of what you can get. All of the radios you talk about, the W-J's, Drakes, R75s, etc, are no longer available new, and in many cases have not been for some time. If you want new, and if you want reasonably good SW receivers, most of the options are SDR right now.
Along with that, I own (among many receivers) a couple of copies of the R75, an NRD-525, and an R8a. I have used and owned various other HF receivers on the better end of the scale, including Racal, W-J, Harris, etc. And a good SDR, like the RFSPace NetSDR or better yet the WinRadio G33DDC or G35DDC, competes with most of these radios favorably.
So you can buy something like the G33DDC and expect it to compare very well with the highest levels of hobby grade receivers you could get in the past. It even does OK when compared to professional receivers.
Essentially anything an NRD can do something like the G33 can do, and the G33 (or similar quality SDR) can do a lot of things an NRC simply can't.
And if you are an MW DXer the ability to record the entire MW band at the top and bottom of the hour means you can listen for every station ID, on every freq. Record 2 minutes at the top of the hour then spend the next 20 or 30 minutes sifting each freq in the recording for station IDs.
Remember that SDRs are available in many levels, from the dirt cheap RTL SDRs to fairly expensive units. And they have performance levels across that same range, from embarrassingly bad to outstanding.
Further, things like the Airspy HF+ and the Elad FDM-S2 provide performance levels that exceed their cost points compared with traditional receivers. The S2, for example, may not be world class, but for basic listening it competes fairly well with things like the Drake R8 and JRCs, cost a good bit less than either of those did when the traditional radios sold new, and has SOO many more capabilities.
Remember the features SDRs bring to the table. Things like wide band displays, the ability to record hunks of spectrum for later review, extremely versatile filter settings. Just look at the filter issue alone. An outstanding traditional radio might have 3 or 4 different IF filter widths for a given mode of operation, but it would not be unusual for an SDR to have ANY IF filter width you want from sub 100 Hz to 10 or 20 kHz. And in some cases the filter skirts can be shaped, from vertical brick walls to gentle slopes, as your listening demands. Yes, some of the later IF DSP traditional radios can also do this, but in general I find the SDR implementation easier to use, and sometimes better performing.
I have traditional radios, some of them quite good, but to tell the truth I almost never use them these days. When I do they are setting on a freq, either monitoring or recording, while I use SDRs to actually look around and find signals.
Then again, the SDR depends a lot on the other equipment you have it attached to. Witha traditional radio the speaker, filtering, and operations are all in the basic box. Sure you can attach a better external speaker maybe, but in general you have what you have, and it is hard to mess it up. On the other hand, SDR perceived performance, sound quality, filter actions, RFI issues, etc, can be impacted easily by externals. A crap sound card, junk speakers, a low end computer choking on the settings you are using, all can reduce the quality of the SDR use, even if the basic SDR hardware is very good.
T!
very well put.👍👍
