At times it is really good to look inward and ask some of the hard questions. You know, like should I build yet another radio or for many hams do I need to buy another Chinese radio? Maybe what I have is plenty and I should just operate or join contests.
I guess in the land of plenty we have developed an attitude of more and better. The Chinese marketing experts are counting on you to be "unsatisfied". Sadly, it may be more but not necessarily better.
On 40M yesterday I heard two local hams banter about their very high end SDR radios. Each had one but one was a Flex and the other an Apache Anon. They were somewhat arguing "mine is bigger than yours". The argument had as a locus the "pre-distortion" functionality.
I am about to share much more than I really know or understand. But I imagine the pre-distortion feature is to cure a problem. It seems when you do a wide-band SDR signal (3Khz) and pump that through a legal limit amp (for some this is 5KW) what cometh out the other end is not so clean. Supposedly the pre-distortion of the signal, magically makes that signal sound clean. (Again, I do not know of what I speak.)
The primal argument was the Anon guy said his radio had real pre-distortion, but the FLEX had a claim of this function, but it did not exist in the 8000 series he was using.
So, I guess harkening back to old times how about a 2.5 kHz wide signal with no speech processing, a good quality microphone and a real legal limit amplifier and of course something more than a wire laid out on the garage floor as an antenna.
This prompts yet another introspection: Did what is his name really need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a ball room makeover? Explain that to those out of work and about to lose their food stamps. Yes, the answer always is: Mine is really bigger than yours.
Them that know can make it go.
73's
Pete N6QW