SdrDx – Software Defined Radio (SDR) App for Mac OS X

Software Defined Radios (SDR) have revolutionized the HF radio monitoring hobby. While most of the SDR manufacturers only offer Windows versions of their SDR application software, there are many third party solutions for other operating systems.

I use Macs, and there’s a great SDR app called SdrDx. It is based on the open source CuteSDR program (which fortunately uses the more permissive BSD license rather than the overly restrictive GPL license, allowing a much wider use of the code). SdrDx is free to download and use.

SdrDx works with all SDRs made by RF Space. I believe it may also work with some soundcard based SDRs, although I have never tried it that way.

As obvious by the screenshot (from a 24″ iMac) there’s a lot of controls. Besides the typical waterfall and spectrum displays, there’s also controls for memories and notch filters, as well as the ability to control the various AGC and noise blanker settings.

There’s a readme file that comes with the download, and recent versions of SdrDx have an optional tooltip display, so you can hover the cursor over a control to find out what it does.

The author of SdrDx is actively developing it, and has added quite a few features based on user suggestions. If you run Mac OS X, and are looking for an app to control your SDR, SdrDx may be the way to go. Download a copy and try it for yourself.

8 thoughts on “SdrDx – Software Defined Radio (SDR) App for Mac OS X

  1. What Mac OS are you running SdrDx under? I’ve tried six ways to Sunday using Mountain Lion on a late-2010 Mac Mini and no joy; the network app which actually connects to the dongle and allows SdrDx to connect to it via the network doesn’t want to function.

  2. What I want: Software that can be hooked up to a radio scanner, that will record anything that hits a certain treshold (e.g. with compressor). I think I can make it from scratch with a DAW, but somehow that seems like a bit of overkill when all I want is something simple.

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