WiNRADiO WR-G35DDCi SDR as good as it gets?

Over the last week Win Radio released details of their new SDR reciever. The WiNRADiO WR-G35DDCi has really seemed caused a bit of a debate on discussion forums ,due to yet another advancement in technology.

Little did I know when I joked in my BDXC review of the G33DCC , that I would be eating my words so soon. So whats the amazing advancement, Win Radio's new unit will captured a staggering 32Mhz of bandwidth, yes...you have read correctly. Although this is the DXer's dream, it does come at big price, I believe it is going to be over $5000 US dollars, no UK price has been mentioned yet.

So the dream will be shortly the reality, but I have to admit, the G35DCCi is clearly aimed for commercial uses, GCHQ etc, rather than the average DXer. Being a user of the G33DCC I struggle to use it's full 4Mhz of bandwidth, so the jump to 32Mhz seems crazy. Valid points have been mentioned about the unit, when would one get the time to listen to such a vast amount of bandwidth, apparently a 4TB hard drive covering 32Mhz will last 7 hours. Thankfully you don't have use the maximum bandwidth, although I would imagine we could see follow DXers swapping Hard Drives.

Of course all this power comes at a cost, you will realistically have to use a fast PC to get your monies worth, probably a Intel i7 with at least 8Gb of Ram, forget going portable with a laptop, as unlike the G31DCC or G33DCC, the G35DCCi runs as a PCI-e card that sits straight on your motherboard. The G35DCCi  specs are pretty similar to the G33DCC, I do wonder about the unit having only one pre-selector, this may be a major problem if you suffer with overload from various different ends of the frequency spectrum and you want to record 32Mhz in one hit.

I have to admit, I can't wait to read the first review, and being that no one has had a play with unit yet, there may be some more surprises install. Personally, I wish someone would release some dedicated  software for playing Win Radio DCC recordings back, if the price was reasonable, it would make a good amount of cash for Win Radio, and in reality most users are after a clearer, and not so crammed screen, for the playback of files.

My next post should be soon, where you will see a return of my usual gossip of music,films and life in general!

73's

Damien