The popular SDR# software which is often used together with RTL-SDR dongles has recently been updated to revision 1400. This new revision brings an interesting new feature which automatically estimates and displays the peak, floor and signal to noise ratio (SNR) values of the currently tuned bandwidth. Watching the SNR metric is very useful when tuning the RF gain settings, as best reception is obtained when the SNR value is maximised. The author also writes that there have been several radical changes to the code that leverage the latest .Net 4.6 framework which should improve the signal processing quality, CPU usage, user experience and hardware support. The changelog is pasted below:
Enhanced the Center tuning mode and extended it for RTL-SDR;
Enhanced the spectrum display;
Changed the frequency labelling to use multiples of 2.5/5/10 or frequency steps;
Added Peak, Floor and SNR estimation for the selection;
Enhanced the defaults for better user experience;
We note that some plugins may break with this update so be sure to make a backup if upgrading. Vasili, one of the most active SDR# plugin programmers has updated most of his plugins to work on this new version now.
Revision 1400 of SDR# with SNR estimation.
In addition to this update, over on the Android OS the popular mobile app SDRTouch has been updated to version 2.6. This new version brings the following features and improvements:
- Baseband recording and file playback
- Direct sampling support for full-band receivers
- Improved SSB image rejection
- Fixed tuning step
- Manual filter bandwidth
- Improved accessibility
- Bug fixes
SDR# updated to revision 1400 & SDR Touch updated to V2.6
Source: RTL SDR