SDR Console setup
- Thread starter JimTailor
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br0adband
Member
Well, you download it, you install it, then if you're using an RTL based device aka "cheap USB TV tuners" you'll need to get the rtlsdr dll files from this site (get the Feb 9th drivers, the latest) because they're not included with the application directly. Drop those dll files in the necessary directory where SDR-Console/Radio is installed and then start the application. The first window that pops up is basically telling you the "list" of receiving hardware is empty which it should be because it hasn't had anything added so click Yes then on the next window click Search - the drop down menu will list all the currently supported SDR ahardware so again if you're using an RTL chip based device and you put those dll files where they should be you'll see RTL SDR (USB) on the list which you select; if the hardware you have is something else as long as it's supported it should be on that list so select it.
It should then ask you if you want to update the list and the number of devices it detected (connected ones at that moment) so select OK. Next window shows you the device with the checkbox selected so you then click OK again and then it'll disappear leaving you with the Select Radio dialogue box. It will have the device listed, a green arrow meaning it's available, so click it one time to highlight it.
Set the sample rate at the bottom (default is 1 MHz bandwidth aka sample rate), leave the Invert Spectrum (Swap IQ) box unchecked, leave Converter deselected, click Start (you can remove the check to have this box pop up every time after you've done this once). Once you click Start it's going to actually fire up the SDR device to a frequency (mine was 10 MHz which it can't even receive, RTL sticks start at 24 MHz) so make sure you have the volume on your speakers turned down all the way since you won't be able to adjust the volume until the moment it's started. The volume control will be just to the right of the speaker icon in the middle of the window - click it once then adjust the slider to the left to lower the volume or click Stop at the top on the toolbar to shut it off so you can adjust some things like the volume, the size of the window (it didn't start maximized on mine).
On the left side you should see the DSP options which control the modulation decoding, by default it'll be set for AM so to get you running and make sure it's working with your SDR device do this:
- click FM, select FM Broadcast, High Fidelity (De-emphasis) and then select FM Stereo as well
- just under that area click 250kHz (so you have the necessary bandwidth for the FM Stereo signal)
- on the upper right side the graphic should change to FM Stereo, click Enable to enable actual FM Stereo modulation decoding, then click the VFO Tuning tab at the bottom to get back to the tuning module so you can see the frequency
- put the cursor on the 1 (the number itself) and then click it a few times till you find an FM broadcast frequency in your area (no idea what stations you have in your neck of the woods, you should probably know at least one or two) and adjust the frequency to match aka tune it to an FM stereo signal
- at the top on the toolbar there's a button (second from the right) that looks like a knob control labeled RF: Automatic, click that once and set it for 32.8 dB (a nice even scale amount of gain) which should be more than enough to get a working signal (assuming you have everything else working and some kind of antenna attached to the SDR device)
- if you don't have a TCXO (temperature controlled oscillator) based SDR device like most of the really cheap $10-20 RTL sticks don't it means when the device warms up it'll drift in terms of frequency accuracy - you may already know about this so if you do this is a refresher of sorts. To adjust the ppm (parts per million) setting in SDR-Console/Radio you click the Radio Configuration button (last icon on the right of the Home toolbar at the top) - adjust the ppm as necessary if you know it, if you don't then that's another tutorial altogether and I won't get into that right now. Once it's adjusted for your device you'll be "accurate" for the most part.
That should be enough to get you started with some idea of how to work the basics. If you want to adjust more things like the available bandwidth click Stop then click the Select icon on the toolbar, it'll bring back that dialogue where you can adjust things in terms of bandwidth. To adjust the span of the spectrum you see onscreen, adjust it using the Span button near the center of the window - the bandwidth of the receiver and the span can be two entirely different things with this application and don't necessarily match but obviously if you do adjust them to be equal you'll see everything the stick is able to pull in more efficiently.
There's a button that can be difficult to see just to the right of the Span selector button - it looks like a white box over a light blue one and that will center the tuned frequency on the spectrum making it a bit easier to manage for some folks. The right side of the spectrum/waterfall there are controls to adjust the contrast aspects of the waterfall; if you click the Display tab at the top of the screen it'll give you a lot more control of the visual aspects of things in the application.
SDR-Console/Radio is an incredibly complex piece of software but pretty damned amazing when you get the hang of it with a really amazing potential for monitoring.
You can enable some of the window panels that make up the main window itself: adjust them, drag them to other locations to customize it, change the colors, change the performance based on your machine's power and capability, etc. If you "screw up" someplace and something just disappears on you and you can't find it again, you can always click the top left icon (the blue "radio tower") and at the bottom it'll give you the option to Reset the program to defaults - that doesn't mean you lose all your information but it will reset the graphical interface back to what it was when you first ran the program. It WILL offer you the option - if you check a box - to totally reset everything including your info like saved program settings, favorites/memories, etc so be very careful when doing a reset and make sure you choose the correct option(s) before committing to it - just selecting Reset itself will start the reset but it will stop at that point (the main window will disappear) and wait for you to select something by checkbox or nothing at all by clicking Continue.
Play around with it, mess it up, learn something, reset it, repeat till you get the hang of it.
ps
If you need to adjust the Step size click Options on the toolbar then select VFO Scroll and adjust as needed based on common frequency band stepping sizes.
It should then ask you if you want to update the list and the number of devices it detected (connected ones at that moment) so select OK. Next window shows you the device with the checkbox selected so you then click OK again and then it'll disappear leaving you with the Select Radio dialogue box. It will have the device listed, a green arrow meaning it's available, so click it one time to highlight it.
Set the sample rate at the bottom (default is 1 MHz bandwidth aka sample rate), leave the Invert Spectrum (Swap IQ) box unchecked, leave Converter deselected, click Start (you can remove the check to have this box pop up every time after you've done this once). Once you click Start it's going to actually fire up the SDR device to a frequency (mine was 10 MHz which it can't even receive, RTL sticks start at 24 MHz) so make sure you have the volume on your speakers turned down all the way since you won't be able to adjust the volume until the moment it's started. The volume control will be just to the right of the speaker icon in the middle of the window - click it once then adjust the slider to the left to lower the volume or click Stop at the top on the toolbar to shut it off so you can adjust some things like the volume, the size of the window (it didn't start maximized on mine).
On the left side you should see the DSP options which control the modulation decoding, by default it'll be set for AM so to get you running and make sure it's working with your SDR device do this:
- click FM, select FM Broadcast, High Fidelity (De-emphasis) and then select FM Stereo as well
- just under that area click 250kHz (so you have the necessary bandwidth for the FM Stereo signal)
- on the upper right side the graphic should change to FM Stereo, click Enable to enable actual FM Stereo modulation decoding, then click the VFO Tuning tab at the bottom to get back to the tuning module so you can see the frequency
- put the cursor on the 1 (the number itself) and then click it a few times till you find an FM broadcast frequency in your area (no idea what stations you have in your neck of the woods, you should probably know at least one or two) and adjust the frequency to match aka tune it to an FM stereo signal
- at the top on the toolbar there's a button (second from the right) that looks like a knob control labeled RF: Automatic, click that once and set it for 32.8 dB (a nice even scale amount of gain) which should be more than enough to get a working signal (assuming you have everything else working and some kind of antenna attached to the SDR device)
- if you don't have a TCXO (temperature controlled oscillator) based SDR device like most of the really cheap $10-20 RTL sticks don't it means when the device warms up it'll drift in terms of frequency accuracy - you may already know about this so if you do this is a refresher of sorts. To adjust the ppm (parts per million) setting in SDR-Console/Radio you click the Radio Configuration button (last icon on the right of the Home toolbar at the top) - adjust the ppm as necessary if you know it, if you don't then that's another tutorial altogether and I won't get into that right now. Once it's adjusted for your device you'll be "accurate" for the most part.
That should be enough to get you started with some idea of how to work the basics. If you want to adjust more things like the available bandwidth click Stop then click the Select icon on the toolbar, it'll bring back that dialogue where you can adjust things in terms of bandwidth. To adjust the span of the spectrum you see onscreen, adjust it using the Span button near the center of the window - the bandwidth of the receiver and the span can be two entirely different things with this application and don't necessarily match but obviously if you do adjust them to be equal you'll see everything the stick is able to pull in more efficiently.
There's a button that can be difficult to see just to the right of the Span selector button - it looks like a white box over a light blue one and that will center the tuned frequency on the spectrum making it a bit easier to manage for some folks. The right side of the spectrum/waterfall there are controls to adjust the contrast aspects of the waterfall; if you click the Display tab at the top of the screen it'll give you a lot more control of the visual aspects of things in the application.
SDR-Console/Radio is an incredibly complex piece of software but pretty damned amazing when you get the hang of it with a really amazing potential for monitoring.
You can enable some of the window panels that make up the main window itself: adjust them, drag them to other locations to customize it, change the colors, change the performance based on your machine's power and capability, etc. If you "screw up" someplace and something just disappears on you and you can't find it again, you can always click the top left icon (the blue "radio tower") and at the bottom it'll give you the option to Reset the program to defaults - that doesn't mean you lose all your information but it will reset the graphical interface back to what it was when you first ran the program. It WILL offer you the option - if you check a box - to totally reset everything including your info like saved program settings, favorites/memories, etc so be very careful when doing a reset and make sure you choose the correct option(s) before committing to it - just selecting Reset itself will start the reset but it will stop at that point (the main window will disappear) and wait for you to select something by checkbox or nothing at all by clicking Continue.
Play around with it, mess it up, learn something, reset it, repeat till you get the hang of it.
ps
If you need to adjust the Step size click Options on the toolbar then select VFO Scroll and adjust as needed based on common frequency band stepping sizes.
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Thank you! I couldn't figure out how to get the software to see my RTL dongle. Now I can and its tuned to a local FM broadcaster. Now I can experiment as you suggested. This is clearly a very sophisticated program with tons of options I'll probably never use but that's okay. I'm also using SDR # and HDSDR. My goal is to learn one or two of them with the RTL dongle for VHF/UHF listening and then upgrade to something that will let me listen to shortwave either by an add on for the dongle or one of the single "DC to daylight" pieces of hardware.
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but, if you were to pick one piece of hardware ($200 or less) to work with one software program, which would it be?
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but, if you were to pick one piece of hardware ($200 or less) to work with one software program, which would it be?
br0adband
Member
Well, my particular monitoring "tastes" aren't the same as anyone else I suppose so I'm used to having multiple applications for various purposes. I've never been into monitoring HF aka shortwave that much, not even in my youth in the early 1970s when I had a Radio Shack shortwave receiver. My interests always landed more in listening into police/fire/EMS (wasn't called EMS so long ago of course) and other things in the upper VHF and now well into the UHF bands. I still remember the specific frequencies of my hometown's Police 1 and 2 and Fire 1 channels off the top of my head, go figure, because in those days scanners were powered by crystals and they weren't exactly cheap but they did come down in price as time passed. Then I had a programmable model from Radio Shack (most of the scanners I've owned were labeled Realistic Pro-something until many years later when I got a Uniden Bearcat BC246T and things changed rather dramatically at that point).
Enough with the history lesson. If I were to spend cash on an SDR device right this moment it would more than likely be the SDRplay aka RSP because of what it offers, the packaging/form factor, the connectivity (a more solid USB connector instead of the microUSB some other devices offer), and the extremely wide coverage (100 kHz to 2 GHz) even in spite of me not really caring all that much about HF/shortwave and doing all that with the price of just $150 USD which is pretty much a steal in most every respect.
But there's a downside of sorts: SDRplay isn't very well supported with SDR# - which is arguably the most popular SDR application in use today - because of a silly and somewhat ridiculous spat (my personal opinion on the matter) between the author/developer of SDR# (who happens to also be the creator/developer of Airspy, a competing SDR device) and SDRplay currently. Some of the issues are legitimate on a technical aspect because SDR# has been updated to a point where it utilizes a specific Microsoft .NET version that doesn't work well with the current SDRplay APIs (at least this is how I understand things at the moment).
Now, I like SDR#, I will glady admit that I use it frequently with my RTL sticks (which is all I use for monitoring) and have no big issues with it and will also admit it was my entry point in the current generation of SDR hardware as it is for so many other people, but in spite of that SDR# is not the only game in town for SDR application software. It's very limited by itself and really shines when you take advantage of the plugins that are available for it.
Having said that SDR-Console/Radio is as stated before an absolutely incredible piece of software and the fact that it's free (at least so far and hopefully it will remain so for the future) is a big huge thing to me and many others. I'm not saying I wouldn't gladly pay Simon (Simon Brown, the author/deveoper of SDR-Console/Radio) for using his application because it's flat out awesome, but because of the sheer complexity and capabilities it offers it's got a somewhat steep learning curve when compared to a rather simplistic application like SDR#.
So that's my feeling on the matter. I'm still loving my "cheap USB TV tuners," definitely, and those along with Unitrunker (another amazing tool) and DSD+ (which has really changed things rather significantly in the past year or so with respect to monitoring digital modes) really makes this a fun hobby for me once again.
Would I like to own an Airspy? Sure. Do I think it's worth the asking price? Well, no, I don't, because when I look at the hardware it's basically an expanded RTL stick for the most part meaning it makes use of some parts that are in the RTL sticks like the ones I've already got. The big benefit with Airspy is of course that 10 MHz of bandwidth you can "see" at one time - SDRplay is limited to about 8 MHz so it's not far behind. The other thing about Airspy is because it uses the RTL chip controller it works with most anything in terms of SDR software as long as it supports RTL SDR devices. But the whole silly somewhat childish actions of the Airspy developer of late soured me on that device - I signed up for the notification list when Airspy was first announced, had fully intended to buy one thinking it might be in the $99 range and then when it was released it was twice the price everyone expected it to be, offered basically the same connectivity (since it's RTL based), and I found myself thinking "Ok, that's not quite worth that much money to me..." and I haven't seen a reason to change my position yet.
Guess I should shut up now before I get myself in trouble.
Anyway, SDRplay would be what I'd invest in at this point even in spite of it not being quite as well supported across so many various applications and tools used for SDR-enabled monitoring. I'd buy an Airspy if it was the same price, or even less, actually, but the increased cost plus the fact that the developer would like you to spend yet another $50 to get the Spyverter which allows the Airspy to monitor HF band activity by down-conversion simply isn't worth the monetary cost(s) involved - SDRplay offers the HF capability natively out of the box and as long as SDR-Console/Radio provides support for it (which it does) then that's what I'd choose. A bit more complex in the long run to get the same job done but I'm ok with that.
For the general SDR monitoring hobbyist, Airspy might be the better option because so many people use SDR# to start with and obviously Airspy - being made by the same developer as SDR# itself - will always support it. As long as you're comfortable forking over a lot more money in the process, Airspy might be the solution for you - but realize it's basically $200 itself and if you have any intentions of HF/shortwave monitoring you're going to have to pay $50 more for the Spyverter.
SDRplay RSP at $150 to me sounds like a better proposal, especially if you find that SDR-Console/Radio provides all the SDR application functionality you find yourself in need of.
Good luck.
ps
SDRplay does work with older versions of SDR# available up to version 1361, iirc, and while you can't get that version directly from the Airspy website, a lot of people do have it safely archived for future purposes (I think I have it around here someplace myself). Versions after build 1361 were when the developer started using a newer version of the .NET framework from Microsoft and that's when the incompatibility issues started creeping in with SDRplay. Just wanted to add this for the record.
Enough with the history lesson. If I were to spend cash on an SDR device right this moment it would more than likely be the SDRplay aka RSP because of what it offers, the packaging/form factor, the connectivity (a more solid USB connector instead of the microUSB some other devices offer), and the extremely wide coverage (100 kHz to 2 GHz) even in spite of me not really caring all that much about HF/shortwave and doing all that with the price of just $150 USD which is pretty much a steal in most every respect.
But there's a downside of sorts: SDRplay isn't very well supported with SDR# - which is arguably the most popular SDR application in use today - because of a silly and somewhat ridiculous spat (my personal opinion on the matter) between the author/developer of SDR# (who happens to also be the creator/developer of Airspy, a competing SDR device) and SDRplay currently. Some of the issues are legitimate on a technical aspect because SDR# has been updated to a point where it utilizes a specific Microsoft .NET version that doesn't work well with the current SDRplay APIs (at least this is how I understand things at the moment).
Now, I like SDR#, I will glady admit that I use it frequently with my RTL sticks (which is all I use for monitoring) and have no big issues with it and will also admit it was my entry point in the current generation of SDR hardware as it is for so many other people, but in spite of that SDR# is not the only game in town for SDR application software. It's very limited by itself and really shines when you take advantage of the plugins that are available for it.
Having said that SDR-Console/Radio is as stated before an absolutely incredible piece of software and the fact that it's free (at least so far and hopefully it will remain so for the future) is a big huge thing to me and many others. I'm not saying I wouldn't gladly pay Simon (Simon Brown, the author/deveoper of SDR-Console/Radio) for using his application because it's flat out awesome, but because of the sheer complexity and capabilities it offers it's got a somewhat steep learning curve when compared to a rather simplistic application like SDR#.
So that's my feeling on the matter. I'm still loving my "cheap USB TV tuners," definitely, and those along with Unitrunker (another amazing tool) and DSD+ (which has really changed things rather significantly in the past year or so with respect to monitoring digital modes) really makes this a fun hobby for me once again.
Would I like to own an Airspy? Sure. Do I think it's worth the asking price? Well, no, I don't, because when I look at the hardware it's basically an expanded RTL stick for the most part meaning it makes use of some parts that are in the RTL sticks like the ones I've already got. The big benefit with Airspy is of course that 10 MHz of bandwidth you can "see" at one time - SDRplay is limited to about 8 MHz so it's not far behind. The other thing about Airspy is because it uses the RTL chip controller it works with most anything in terms of SDR software as long as it supports RTL SDR devices. But the whole silly somewhat childish actions of the Airspy developer of late soured me on that device - I signed up for the notification list when Airspy was first announced, had fully intended to buy one thinking it might be in the $99 range and then when it was released it was twice the price everyone expected it to be, offered basically the same connectivity (since it's RTL based), and I found myself thinking "Ok, that's not quite worth that much money to me..." and I haven't seen a reason to change my position yet.
Guess I should shut up now before I get myself in trouble.
Anyway, SDRplay would be what I'd invest in at this point even in spite of it not being quite as well supported across so many various applications and tools used for SDR-enabled monitoring. I'd buy an Airspy if it was the same price, or even less, actually, but the increased cost plus the fact that the developer would like you to spend yet another $50 to get the Spyverter which allows the Airspy to monitor HF band activity by down-conversion simply isn't worth the monetary cost(s) involved - SDRplay offers the HF capability natively out of the box and as long as SDR-Console/Radio provides support for it (which it does) then that's what I'd choose. A bit more complex in the long run to get the same job done but I'm ok with that.
For the general SDR monitoring hobbyist, Airspy might be the better option because so many people use SDR# to start with and obviously Airspy - being made by the same developer as SDR# itself - will always support it. As long as you're comfortable forking over a lot more money in the process, Airspy might be the solution for you - but realize it's basically $200 itself and if you have any intentions of HF/shortwave monitoring you're going to have to pay $50 more for the Spyverter.
SDRplay RSP at $150 to me sounds like a better proposal, especially if you find that SDR-Console/Radio provides all the SDR application functionality you find yourself in need of.
Good luck.
ps
SDRplay does work with older versions of SDR# available up to version 1361, iirc, and while you can't get that version directly from the Airspy website, a lot of people do have it safely archived for future purposes (I think I have it around here someplace myself). Versions after build 1361 were when the developer started using a newer version of the .NET framework from Microsoft and that's when the incompatibility issues started creeping in with SDRplay. Just wanted to add this for the record.
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cpetraglia
Member
Does SDR Console have any scanner function plug-ins out there? I have searched and found none. The SDR# plugins only work with some of the older versions and I am using an SDR Play.
I love SDR Console. It's clearly superior. Cant wait for a scanner plug-in.
Chuck
I love SDR Console. It's clearly superior. Cant wait for a scanner plug-in.
Chuck
br0adband
Member
Would be an awesome feature addition, certainly, but I don't believe SDR-Console/Radio really supports that kind of plugin architecture unfortunately. In my experience of using it, it's more akin to a "communications receiver" software implementation than a scanner, forgive my somewhat basic analogy there. It does offer up to 100 memories but then you end up "scanning" them manually one at a time as required, not the most efficient way of doing things but again it's not really a scanning-type application by design.
As for the SDR# plugins, for use with SDRplay you have to use v1361 and the plugins that work with that version - any newer builds of SDR# simply don't work with SDRplay because of the "issues" mentioned in the information posted above.
There's a link at the SDRplay forum for v1361 and even a link to an archive that has a bunch of the plugins compatible with that build of SDR# as well.
As for the SDR# plugins, for use with SDRplay you have to use v1361 and the plugins that work with that version - any newer builds of SDR# simply don't work with SDRplay because of the "issues" mentioned in the information posted above.
There's a link at the SDRplay forum for v1361 and even a link to an archive that has a bunch of the plugins compatible with that build of SDR# as well.
Recommended Settings
Is there a list of recommended settings for SDR Console? Or, how do I reset all settings to how they were at original startup. I somehow have things out of control and am getting poor reception compared to when I installed and first ran. Thanks anyone
Is there a list of recommended settings for SDR Console? Or, how do I reset all settings to how they were at original startup. I somehow have things out of control and am getting poor reception compared to when I installed and first ran. Thanks anyone
If you wish to learn more about SDR Console, check in here: https://sdr-radio.groups.io/g/main/topics. There's regular dialog with the software developer, Simon Brown.
I had to find an alternative to sdr# because I have two feeds one with a physical scanner and one I broadcast with SDR, when the scanner was streaming it made the audio cut out and skip on sdr#. It also took tons of PC resources and slowed down my system. I don't use a big powerful PC to provide my feed and sdr# barely ran even closing the app took up to a minute to complete.Well, my particular monitoring "tastes" aren't the same as anyone else I suppose so I'm used to having multiple applications for various purposes. I've never been into monitoring HF aka shortwave that much, not even in my youth in the early 1970s when I had a Radio Shack shortwave receiver. My interests always landed more in listening into police/fire/EMS (wasn't called EMS so long ago of course) and other things in the upper VHF and now well into the UHF bands. I still remember the specific frequencies of my hometown's Police 1 and 2 and Fire 1 channels off the top of my head, go figure, because in those days scanners were powered by crystals and they weren't exactly cheap but they did come down in price as time passed. Then I had a programmable model from Radio Shack (most of the scanners I've owned were labeled Realistic Pro-something until many years later when I got a Uniden Bearcat BC246T and things changed rather dramatically at that point).
Enough with the history lesson. If I were to spend cash on an SDR device right this moment it would more than likely be the SDRplay aka RSP because of what it offers, the packaging/form factor, the connectivity (a more solid USB connector instead of the microUSB some other devices offer), and the extremely wide coverage (100 kHz to 2 GHz) even in spite of me not really caring all that much about HF/shortwave and doing all that with the price of just $150 USD which is pretty much a steal in most every respect.
But there's a downside of sorts: SDRplay isn't very well supported with SDR# - which is arguably the most popular SDR application in use today - because of a silly and somewhat ridiculous spat (my personal opinion on the matter) between the author/developer of SDR# (who happens to also be the creator/developer of Airspy, a competing SDR device) and SDRplay currently. Some of the issues are legitimate on a technical aspect because SDR# has been updated to a point where it utilizes a specific Microsoft .NET version that doesn't work well with the current SDRplay APIs (at least this is how I understand things at the moment).
Now, I like SDR#, I will glady admit that I use it frequently with my RTL sticks (which is all I use for monitoring) and have no big issues with it and will also admit it was my entry point in the current generation of SDR hardware as it is for so many other people, but in spite of that SDR# is not the only game in town for SDR application software. It's very limited by itself and really shines when you take advantage of the plugins that are available for it.
Having said that SDR-Console/Radio is as stated before an absolutely incredible piece of software and the fact that it's free (at least so far and hopefully it will remain so for the future) is a big huge thing to me and many others. I'm not saying I wouldn't gladly pay Simon (Simon Brown, the author/deveoper of SDR-Console/Radio) for using his application because it's flat out awesome, but because of the sheer complexity and capabilities it offers it's got a somewhat steep learning curve when compared to a rather simplistic application like SDR#.
So that's my feeling on the matter. I'm still loving my "cheap USB TV tuners," definitely, and those along with Unitrunker (another amazing tool) and DSD+ (which has really changed things rather significantly in the past year or so with respect to monitoring digital modes) really makes this a fun hobby for me once again.
Would I like to own an Airspy? Sure. Do I think it's worth the asking price? Well, no, I don't, because when I look at the hardware it's basically an expanded RTL stick for the most part meaning it makes use of some parts that are in the RTL sticks like the ones I've already got. The big benefit with Airspy is of course that 10 MHz of bandwidth you can "see" at one time - SDRplay is limited to about 8 MHz so it's not far behind. The other thing about Airspy is because it uses the RTL chip controller it works with most anything in terms of SDR software as long as it supports RTL SDR devices. But the whole silly somewhat childish actions of the Airspy developer of late soured me on that device - I signed up for the notification list when Airspy was first announced, had fully intended to buy one thinking it might be in the $99 range and then when it was released it was twice the price everyone expected it to be, offered basically the same connectivity (since it's RTL based), and I found myself thinking "Ok, that's not quite worth that much money to me..." and I haven't seen a reason to change my position yet.
Guess I should shut up now before I get myself in trouble.
Anyway, SDRplay would be what I'd invest in at this point even in spite of it not being quite as well supported across so many various applications and tools used for SDR-enabled monitoring. I'd buy an Airspy if it was the same price, or even less, actually, but the increased cost plus the fact that the developer would like you to spend yet another $50 to get the Spyverter which allows the Airspy to monitor HF band activity by down-conversion simply isn't worth the monetary cost(s) involved - SDRplay offers the HF capability natively out of the box and as long as SDR-Console/Radio provides support for it (which it does) then that's what I'd choose. A bit more complex in the long run to get the same job done but I'm ok with that.
For the general SDR monitoring hobbyist, Airspy might be the better option because so many people use SDR# to start with and obviously Airspy - being made by the same developer as SDR# itself - will always support it. As long as you're comfortable forking over a lot more money in the process, Airspy might be the solution for you - but realize it's basically $200 itself and if you have any intentions of HF/shortwave monitoring you're going to have to pay $50 more for the Spyverter.
SDRplay RSP at $150 to me sounds like a better proposal, especially if you find that SDR-Console/Radio provides all the SDR application functionality you find yourself in need of.
Good luck.
ps
SDRplay does work with older versions of SDR# available up to version 1361, iirc, and while you can't get that version directly from the Airspy website, a lot of people do have it safely archived for future purposes (I think I have it around here someplace myself). Versions after build 1361 were when the developer started using a newer version of the .NET framework from Microsoft and that's when the incompatibility issues started creeping in with SDRplay. Just wanted to add this for the record.
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