Adding more capabilities to SDRUno workspaces could provide substantial improvements for using SDRPlay. Save and recall optimized radio configurations.

As mentioned before, SDRPlay is a radio spectrum processor, not a traditional radio receiver. Given its architecture and broad spectrum coverage to 2 GHz, SDRPlay is more of a general toolkit for exploring the radio spectrum. You need to configure a lot of different settings to end up with an optimized “receiver” for a particular band.

The settings that need attention are various gains or attenuation within the receiving path, choice of IF, and choice of sampling ratio. Many settings and choices are available. In general, SDRPlay has done a pretty good job of pre-configuring various gain or attenuation settings for each major frequency band served by the input amplifiers on the Mirics chipset. These settings include baseband, mixer and LNA gain.

In playing around on various bands, I have found that further adjustments to sample ratio and IF configuration, as well as gain settings, can make a huge difference. In particular, these adjustments help reduce images, aliasing and other artifacts, as well as ADC overload and improved dynamic range with my specific antennas.

Unfortunately, SDRUno does not have the ability to remember these settings. I have to write them down, and recreate the configuration manually each time I want a different radio optimization. So, I have a notebook handy that reminds me what to do when I change from 20 meter HF to AM broadcast band, for example.

SDRUno Workspaces could configure different radios

Enter SDRUno Workspaces. At present, these workspaces are a tool that remembers which of SDRUno’s multiple windows are supposed to be open, and where to place them on the screen. You can define, save and recall up to ten different workspaces. Great for the GUI. Does nothing for the “radio”.

So, my suggestion to the folks at SDRPlay is to also provide workspaces with the ability to define a radio, not just a pretty face. In software development this is called persistence. It should be relatively straightforward to to save and recall both GUI and functional settings with SDRUno workspaces.