[Premium-Rx] Help choosing HF receiver

[sm0aom at telia.com]

Decades ago, I was involved in evaluation of HFreceivers for diplomatic and SIGINT purposes.

Many receivers were tested, but the RA3701and later the 3791 won out due to price/performance.
The EK890 (predecessor to the EK895) was good, but too expensive, and the WJ8711 came quite far down the list,
mostly due to audio distorsion and "buggy" software. Also, the synthesiser did not live up to expectations.

Today, when the spectrum occupancy by strong BC stations is much smaller, the demands on the synthesiser become a lot less,
so the extremely good signal handling properties of the E1800 and similar receivers are not needed in the same extent.

Even quite mundane receivers tend to give good performance today, as the ambient noise floor is much higher now which will
mask spuriouses and intermodulation artifacts quite well.

73/Karl-Arne
SM0AOM



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Från : premium-rx at mailman.qth.net
Datum : 2023-07-01 - 22:34 ()
Till : premium-rx at mailman.qth.net
Ämne : [Premium-Rx] Help choosing HF receiver

Dear group,

After having some conventional receivers, Drakes, Lowe, AOR and a Winradio SDR I have decided to make a step further and geting a professional receiver, although I had already got a Racal 1772 and for my taste it was quite noisy.

I would be very pleased if the members of this forum could indicate me in the right direction and throw some light in which receiver to choose since I am a bit confused in this aspect.

I am mainly interested in voice signals, not digital modes, mainly BCB and SWL, digging tropical band stations out of the mud so audio recovery and audio in general is quite important.

After surfing the web and readind on eham and in forums, I have in mind these receivers (in no special order):

 -Racal 3791, but it is said that the audio is not as pleasant as the RA 3701.
 -Racal 3701, on the contrary of the DSP version RA3791 is an analogic IF design  and as indicated before its sound is ways better but it does not have the additional independent IF BW options
- R&S EK895, with the quasi-continuous tuning fitted.
- WJ 8711A
- Cubic CDR-3280

 Any help and thoughts are very wellcomed. Any other receiver apart from the above?

 Thanks in advance
 Regards
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