> Someday they will be, and many of us will be using them.
I think it was back around 1993 that there was a discussion on the
Internet about using a wide-band ADC to replace the front end of an HF
receiver. I commented then that you just couldn't get good enough
performance with affordable ADCs available at that time, but someday you
might.
Time marches on and now ADCs are available that give usable performance
at a reasonable price. They still can't compete with a state-of-the-art
receiver like a K3, but they are as good as many analog radios of a few
decades ago and are quite reasonable for casual operation or even for
contesting or DXing if you don't have a very high-signal environment.
So how long before ADC technology catches up to the K3? If Moore's law
applied (doubling of performance every couple years) it wouldn't be
long. Unfortunately Moore's law applies mainly to digital circuitry but
the key parts of an ADC are analog (the "A" in "ADC"). Unless there is
a big theoretical breakthrough in ADC architecture, I think we still
have some years to wait.
Alan N1AL
On 09/15/2015 08:49 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
On Tue,9/15/2015 5:48 PM, Walter Underwood wrote:
This might be an orthogonal opinion, but I think it is awesome that
high-end direct sampling receivers are competitive with mid-range
superhets.
But they are NOT competitive in strong signal environments! That's the
point of this discussion -- the measurement system must give them a
10-20 dB handicap to make them LOOK competitive.
Someday they will be, and many of us will be using them.
73, Jim K9YC
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