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2006 article by Quinn Norton that was linked in USRP's Wikipedia: https://www.wired.com/2006/06/gnu-radio-opens-an-unseen-worl...

Not with RTL-SDR specifically but by introducing one of the first open-architecture SDRs, the USRP.

RTL-SDR is the cheapest imaginable commodity implementation of SDR technology, while USRP was... well, pricy enough to bring in some solid revenue and get his company bought. More power to him, it was (and is) an incredibly useful platform.

RTLSDRs only have a 8-Bit ADC that easily drown next to strong transmitters.

I remember the Ettus devices to be much much much more powerful.

the Ettus USRP SDRs predate RTL-SDR by almost (not quite) a decade.

I was always into the soundcard HF SDRs, they were so simple and elegant. An oscillator, a ring counter, a 4052 MUX and one really fast dual opamp.

This sounds interesting. How do they work, or where can I learn more?

The very original: https://www.wb5rvz.com/sdr/

I have a couple of Kanga Finningley SDRs bought through the G-QRP club, but they appear to have almost entirely vanished from the Internet.