{"id":1908,"date":"2019-07-27T12:03:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T10:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wijnants.info\/fmdx\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2021-03-26T20:07:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T18:07:16","slug":"rtl-sdr-and-dab-july-27-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/rtl-sdr-and-dab-july-27-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"RTL SDR and DAB &#8211; July 27 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The RTL SDR I ordered from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined\/dp\/B0129EBDS2\/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=rtl+sdr&amp;qid=1564217976&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Amazon<\/a> arrived after 9 days.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385731406_8b01e8c185_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter \" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385731406_8b01e8c185_o.jpg\" alt=\"RTL-SDR\" width=\"168\" height=\"132\"><\/a><br \/>\nWhy buying an RTL when you already own an SDRPlay 1A (metal cased) and an Airspy R2?<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385844461_6bee3b6a2e_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385844461_6bee3b6a2e_o.jpg\" alt=\"RSP 1A with metal casing\" width=\"622\" height=\"300\"><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385980852_fec561361e_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385980852_fec561361e_o.jpg\" alt=\"Airspy R2\" width=\"294\" height=\"292\"><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>When doing some DAB+dxing it&#8217;s vital to find out the TII (Transmitter Identification Information) code to pinpoint the location of the dx reception.&nbsp; These codes can be found on the dab listing of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fmlist.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.fmlist.com<\/a>.<br \/>\nThe codes can also be seen in software decoders lik <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/JvanKatwijk\/qt-dab\/releases\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">QT-DAB<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/softsyst.com\/qirx\">QIRX<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately Belgian codes are not freely available. So one has to check them near to a local transmitter. Of course there&#8217;s no need for a sophisticated SDR or a high gain antenna.<br \/>\nOn the contrary! Just a cheap RTL and no antenna will do the trick and eliminate receiving other transmitter than the one you are next to.<br \/>\nIt worked nicely with a laptop and SDRPlay1A, but it&#8217;s a bit of a hassle always having to unplug the device from your DX set-up.<br \/>\nSo a cheap RTL is the way to proceed.<\/p>\n<p>Connecting the RTL SDR to QIRX isn&#8217;t easy. You do need <a href=\"https:\/\/zadig.akeo.ie\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ZADIG<\/a> to install a working driver and perhaps change the QIRX device index in the settings.<br \/>\nI also wanted to run QT-DAB and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sdr-radio.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SDRConsole<\/a> with the RTL SDR as I did with SDRPlay1A.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, RTL SDR and Zadig don&#8217;t like that idea. I did get QIRX running or SDRC and QT-DAB but not all of them. A bit of a bummer. As I need the RTL SDR to check out TII codes, I opted for having QIRX running on the laptop. It works well.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385731386_5db840ab9a_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter \" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385731386_0a92a65de2.jpg\" alt=\"QIRX decoding DAB+\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How does RTL SDR compare to the other devices? As to be expected Airspy and SDRPlay1A hooked up to a decent DAB+ antenna hugely outperform the RTL SDR.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover my living room DABMANi250 connected to the same telescopic antenna grabs more stations than the SDR-RTL. But then again all these devices cost 5 tot 10 times more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.playthek.de\/images\/dgh\/327476_00.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter \" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/48385776406_41371bbc69_o.jpg\" alt=\"DABMANi250\" width=\"400\" height=\"171\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Conclusion: if you want to check out some DAB while on the move and don&#8217;t want to fiddle with antennas or take along your other devices, RTL SDR will do nicely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The RTL SDR I ordered from Amazon arrived after 9 days. Why buying an RTL when you already own an SDRPlay 1A (metal cased) and an Airspy R2? When doing some DAB+dxing it&#8217;s vital to find out the TII (Transmitter Identification Information) code to pinpoint the location of the dx reception.&nbsp; These codes can be&hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/rtl-sdr-and-dab-july-27-2019\/\">Read the full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,13,15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dab","category-fmdx","category-hardware","category-radio"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 09:02:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wijnants.info\/fmdx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}