Rob Sherwood comments on performance and latency - Disruptive Technologies

Peter Bacon

A very interesting discussion on latency amongst other items in presentation  by Rob Sherwood to CTU.  https://youtu.be/owaaT6u4XkY

Ria

I do agree with him that anything above 80dB RMDR or narrow space DR is just a numbers contest and mostly inconsequential to real world use. There was some I didn't agree with and felt like it was a bit biased toward icom. Not raw performance but the state of the market. Several other SDR models were not mentioned including the Elad FDM duo and Expert Electronics MB-1. There is also the use case of CW skimmer which was not mentioned at all. To me the really disruptive technology is using $30 RTL SDR dongles to run skimmer instead of a $1000 Perseus. This means that assisted stations that previously could not run full band skimmer due to limitations in radios such as the K3 (which can only do 22kHz bandwidth for skimmer) can now do it and even do like K3LR and have a dedicated skimmer rack with one per band. Ria

Ken - NM9P

Overall, the main theme of the presentation is that the whole landscape is changing.
The information on the release and sales success of the IC-7300 was pretty amazing, and i think it will serve as a watershed event in the minds of many hams indicating that the era of SDR has arrived.    

He did, however, seem to sound a little like an ICOM salesman in places.  But his experience with the rig was pretty positive, overall, so I can't blame him too much.  

It did seem, however, that other than his graphs and comparison with the K3S, many of his references to the 6000 series were just "in passing."  i.e. when referencing phase noise in oscillators, or when discussing latency, etc..  

In the latency discussion, it would have been nice to have seen the different rigs compared for latency with similar bandwidth and filter shape factor. That would be apples-to-apples.

I think that since this was delivered on Thursday of Dayton week, he didn't have (or couldn't share) information about the new 6400/6400M/6600/6600M models which are reported to have improved RMDR and filtering.  Especially the Contest Grade filters on the 6600 models.

Too bad he didn't have the opportunity to compare the upcoming 6400 to the IC-7300 & IC-7610.  It would be interesting.  

One thing for sure...the landscape (or should I say "horse race?") is changing rapidly, and it is going to be harder for anyone to keep up with all the hardware and software performance statistics.  Harder still to test all of them in a consistent manner and keep the comparison charts current as software releases, and performance, constantly evolve.

Ken - NM9P

Varistor

Rob cannot possibly comment on products that are months away and thus there was nothing to discuss regarding the new Flex models (or the Icom 7610 for that matter). Rob makes statements on facts/actual data rather than on speculations.

Ken - NM9P

Agreed...Had it been one day later, he may have been able to discuss, a little, that there was going to be a new offering from Flex and what those capabilities are expected to be -- just as he did with limited information about the IC-7610.  

I offered that particular point not as a criticism, but as an observation of the unfortunate timing of the presentation with respect to Flex's new product release.

It was "too bad" he didn't have the opportunity to compare the rigs, because there WAS no opportunity.  Next year will be a different story.  The next few years are going to be fun, as an increasing number of manufacturers get into the game!