On 7/20/2010 4:31 PM, Ruth Miller wrote:
I have been a flex user for over 8 years now and am extremely fond of my
SDR-1000, this wonderful radio has served me well, however, I now feel it's
time to move on.
Over the last few months I have been evaluating various SDR offerings and it
seems that the latest and by far the most appealing (at least to me)technology
so far appears to be DDC/DUC method of implementing SDR, it offers various
inherent advantages over direct sampling as there is no image to suppress or
ability to multiple receive using the single ADC.
Is flex looking at moving to this platform? I would be willing to wait if it's
going to happen any time soon :), if not i'll go for the FLEX-3000 for now.
Ruth
Ruth:
There are no receiver advantages to using the ADC/DDC at this time. It
is not possible to achieve with a DAC based receiver what Flex has done
with its mixer technology. Your receivers are about to get a lot better
with a software upgrade than even the current ones which are very high
on all tables measuring the receivers.
The transmitters COULD be improved upon using a DUC/DAC technology, none
is planned. The 3000 has a very clean transmitter so if you like it, go
for it.
There are THINGS a DAC based receiver can do that the Flex based QSD
mixer radios cannot do, and that is cover all HF amateur radio bands at
once and pass the data into computer for your processing.
CWSkimmer does this for you on CW for example with several of the ADC.
Flex Radio DOES have a commercial product using the DAC called SERX. It
is being delivered to the customer who paid for the development as we
type. This COULD BE but is not yet, the basis for an amateur product
using ADC technology. It absolutely has the best analog front end of
ANY of the boards I have measured (I own all of the big ones you know of
and some you likely don't). The FPGA on board is VERY expensive to meet
the customers needs for >100 channels and real time signal detection
along with many seconds of delay line to buffer data after event
detection to tune DDC to the right channel. None of this is really
needed in an amateur product except for the FANTASTIC analog front end.
It could be a product, it is not at this time nor on the horizon. Flex
has its hands full with Flex 1500, improves to software for both 3000
and 5000, V/U board, and more.
Bob
N4HY
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