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Reviews For: Softrock Ensemble III SDR Receiver

Category: Receivers: General Coverage

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Review Summary For : Softrock Ensemble III SDR Receiver
Reviews: 3MSRP: 68
Description:
Description: The SoftRock RX Ensemble III SDR Receiver
built for HF, 1.8 MHz through 30 MHz, operation. This
receiver has been built and tested by Tony Parks, KB9YIG.
Built kits are only available in limited quantities as
Tony has time to build them.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.fivedash.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0035
KK6RPX Rating: 2016-03-03
Fun Stuff! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Myself and the YL just built this kit. It took around four build sessions and a couple of bottles of wine to build it. The documentation is top notch. I did the surface mount and the YL did all the through hole components.

Because of the surface mount parts I would say that this isn't a beginners kit. I'd say it is an intermediate kit, certainly not advanced. There are quite a few inductors and transformers to wind.

Although it clearly states it on the purchase page, I didn't realize that you need a stereo input sound card. So when I plugged it into my laptop, I had no image rejection. Took me a little while to figure it out. I got an external USB sound card and now it works a treat! It does very well for such an inexpensive and simple device.

Software set up went well for me, but is easy to see where it could go sour. Once set up it all runs great on the two machines I have set up for it. Calibration was simple and in a few minutes I got it to within 12Hz or so.

Great product, fun to build, cheap, works good. What more can I say?



K4YAB Rating: 2015-06-24
Follow Up Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Received My Softrock Ensemble 3 Rx Back from Repair.
Installed in Cabinet and loaded Software.
Works Great. Has great Selectivity.
Thanks Tony for the Quick Turn around.
Wayne K4YAB

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Earlier 5-star review posted by K4YAB on 2015-06-19

I purchased a Built Softrock Ensemble 3.
I couldn't get it to work. Had the Software running pretty quickly.
I couldn't get the Receiver To operate.
Talk to Tony at DashFive.
He had me send it back to him. He Repaired it at NO COST, AND SHIPPED IT BACK FREE.
He said it appeared that a Static Electrical Charge took it out.
I believe this was My Fault. If I had installed it in its Cabinet, it May have been Ok.
WB8YQJ Rating: 2015-01-04
Excellent++ Value HF SDR Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The Softrock Ensemble III is close in performance to my HF transceivers and has even better audio fidelity. I would suggest Ensemble to any amateur radio operator that does not have an SDR HF radio yet. At ($68 kit or $92 built) the other popular entry level option for a first SDR seems to be RTL2832U ($27.95) plus Ham-it-Up v1.2 (54.95). This setup has the advantage of VHF as compared to Ensemble but is not as well engineered or constructed for amateur radio, for example it is missing the essential bandpass filters for amateur radio that Ensemble supplies. In addition Ensemble III provides a preamplifier for 16-30Mhz. There is a wealth of free software such as HDSDR, SDR#, and SDR-Radio that can be used with Ensemble. There is a great Yahoo group as well. I particularly enjoyed the experience of building this device and have my project notes and some photos on the web at http://wb8yqj.yolasite.com/sdr.php