Re: [IRCA] SDR Recommendations?
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Re: [IRCA] SDR Recommendations?



Hi Anthony

I've owned an Excalibur for the past two years, and very recently added a Perseus to my radio collection. Both are quite good receivers. I'm not aware of any Mac software to run either radio, although there may be third party software I don't know about.

I've been generally happy withe the User Interface that comes with the Excalibur. I'm much less impressed with the Perseus UI, but I've only been using it for a couple of days and may need to give it more time.

I haven't run into the recording issue Nick mentions. I routinely use the Excalibur to record 2 MHZ sections of spectrum (MW & SW) with no problems. That's with a quad core (i5) CPU in my PC. The problem could nonetheless occur with older, slower PCs (single CPU and possibly some low end dual core PCs).

Bruce

On 7/12/2013 07:29, Nick Hall-Patch wrote:
I'm afraid I don't have a lot of experience with your possible choices for SDR, Anthony, and none with driving them with an Apple computer, but a couple of thoughts:

I lurk on the Perseus Yahoo list, and people do you use Apple computers for Perseus, but I believe it's by running some sort of Windows virtual machine. You could probably get some answers on that group, perhaps by first searching the archives.

I seem to recall problems recording the entire band with the Excalibur, at least using the native software, but I'm happy to be proved wrong. There are a couple of Yahoo groups devoted to Winradio, so again you might get better information there.

I've run the RFSpace SDR-14 with little effort using a Windows 8 tablet (from Samsung, not Microsoft), and found the tablet itself to be remarkably competent for such a low power device, so it may well have been able to handle a Perseus with its wider bandwidth. But it has to be Windows 8, not Windows RT!

best wishes,

Nick



At 13:10 12-07-13, you wrote:
I've been considering adding an SDR to my MW dx tool arsenal but I am a newbie in that area and am looking for any thoughts or recommendations from those of you more experienced than me. The primary appeal to me about SDR is the ability to record the entire band for later searching.

Currently, I am all Apple: Imac, Macbook Pro, iPad. I've been reading up on and have been pretty impressed with the Perseus and the WinRadio Excalibur. Are there any Mac users out there using them? If so, what do I need to be aware with regard to interface and software requirements? If Mac is out of the question for either of those, would they work with one of the new Microsoft tablet PC's or would I need a full blown Windows PC system?

Another thought I had was to initially, perhaps just 'get my feet wet' and play around with one of the USB dongles I've seen advertised. Are they a waste of time for serious use? If not, will any of those work with a Mac?

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Anthony R Gargano
n2ss@xxxxxxxx

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