I'm thinking of investing in an SDR to add to my setup and this one seems to fit my limited budget, I want to use it alongside my R75 to hunt signals (mostly ute stuff.) I'm running Windows vista & my soundcard is 96khz. I've been using the SDR-Radio program and with that I usually set it to 150khz waterfall bandwidth but 96khz is perfectly acceptable. There dosen't seem to be a whole lot of info out there about this particular model. The softrock is another SDR in the same price range but they are always out of stock. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Justin (oar9fi)
With regards to the SoftRock, the web page always shows them out of stock, hit the contact link and ask if one is in stock, more often than not you will be able to get one that way.
Expect to have to upgrade your sound card. The 96 kHz card you have probably has other limitations in addition to the limited bandwidth.
This unit (Soft66LC2) is a sound card based SDR. Sound card based SDRs have several performance limitations not found on DDC SDRs. If you are used to using NetSDRs, SDR-14, SDR-IQs, etc, on SDR-Radio you will NOT get the same performance from a sound card based SDR. If you limit yourself to the soundcard based Ensemble IIs and Softrocks on SDR-Radio then you may see the performance differences and issues.
TANSTAFL, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Sound card SDRs are a real value. Performance and capability that is fair at a very cheap price. 10 years ago such capability would cost maybe thousands of dollars, and can now be had for under $100 USD, about the cost of an entry level portable. But, it is unrealistic to compare them to DDC SDRs costing many times more, so make sure you understand the issues with them before you purchase.
I have not used the Soft66LC2, but I did get ahold of an earlier version of the Soft66. It performed well, about on the order of my SoftRock Ensemble II, pretty much as expected. But, if you can afford the SDR-IQ (or any other non-sound card based SDR) I bet you will find it much more forgiving in use, more trouble free in operation, and require less tweaking to get optimal performance.
T!