[hpsdr] General question - sampling rate vs bits on ADC

[Glenn Thomas]

There is an issue with using a PC sound card that has not yet been 
mentioned. That is the fact that one winds up with a really bad level 
of system integration. All of the extra cables between the RF 
hardware and the PC give many additional opportunities for interface 
failures (connector corrosion, wear) and provides additional paths 
for RF feedback.

If you want to find out with a fairly good SDR (better than the Soft 
rock IMHO), see if you can find a Flex SDR-1000. That's very close to 
the best example of a full-featured SDR that uses a PC sound card 
(albeit a very high quality card - just any card isn't good enough, 
for reasons described by Steve Bunch). Later Flex hardware uses the 
same Tayloe mixer as the '1000 but include an integrated ADC/DAC - 
much better system integration than the '1000 but the overall system 
isn't as flexible or as high performance as HPSDR.

73 de Glenn WB6W


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