Edision SL-2 LNBF - review

Brct203

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Dec 24, 2016
1,457
1,592
Connecticut
As you may remember, Michael (KE4EST) and Casey (from HyperMegaSat) recently ran a giveaway contest, and the prize was an Edision LNBF. The contest came with a catch: the winner had to commit to writing a review of the LNBF. I was the lucky winner, so now is the time to uphold my end of the deal, and here is my review of the LNBF.

I think we are all familiar with Edision as a brand of great Enigma2 receivers, but it appears they also make LNBFs (and many other things, actually).

The Edision SL-2 is a universal, single-output LNBF. It has the usual 9750 and 10600 LO frequencies, selected by 22kHz tone. It promises a 0.1dB noise figure - which seems fairly standard these days, for what it’s worth.

While the LNBF is overall quite short, the area that goes in the holder is a bit longer than on most, which allows for a bit more adjustment of the focal point, or leaves room for a multifeed retrofit bracket. Definitely a good thing. Talking of multifeed, the diameter of the scalar area is rather large, which could be a limiting factor in multifeed setups.

IMG_6673.JPG


I figured that installing the LNBF and showing a screenshot of a random channel with signal quality would not make a very compelling review (as we all know that there are many other factors at play), so I went a bit further. I went through my boxes of satellite things and gathered a few LNBFs, and did a comparison test.

Setup:

- FortecStar 90cm dish, not motorized

- Edision OSMIO+ receiver running TNAP 4.2

- RTL-SDR dongle with SDRSharp

- power-blocking splitter (for use with the SDR dongle)

List of LNBFs being compared:

- Inverto Black Ultra

- Inverto Home Pro PLL

- Edision SL-2

- GeoSatPro UL1-PLL

- X2 IT-01 single

- Sharp BS1R8EL100A

- Maverick MK1-PLL

- Sadoun KUL1

(in that order in the picture from top left to bottom right)

IMG_6671.JPG


All are universal except the Maverick and Sadoun. The Sharp and the Sadoun LNBFs are from salvaged dishes, I don’t know how old they are.

I tested with some fairly common transponders/channels on some of the most popular FTA satellites available to North-American hobbyists.

Procedure: one satellite at a time, I ran one LNBF at a time, fine-tuning the elevation and azimuth each time, as well as focal position and skew.

I used the “signal finder” app in the receiver to select the transponder and measure the signal quality. Then I swapped the LNBF and fine tuned again and measured, and so on...

Note that while I did this to the best of my ability, we should keep in mind that this is not a highly scientific or rigorous test, and might have a few inaccuracies as I was aiming the dish manually (and we all know that’s not so easy), and while the weather was nice, with mostly blue sky, there was occasional thin clouds that might have had a small attenuating effect on some measurements. Also I added the GeoSatPro LNBF after I had already tested on a few satellites, hence the missing numbers

Here are the results (signal quality in dB):

Satellite​
TP​
Channel​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Standard 10750​
Standard 10750​
Inverto Black Ultra​
Inverto Home Pro PLL​
Edision SL-2
X-2 single IT-01​
GeoSatPro UL1-PLL​
Sharp BS1R8EL100A​
Maverick MK1-PLL​
Sadoun KUL1​
125W​
12180 V 30000​
PBS​
13.7​
13.3​
13.2​
13.2​
12.9​
12.9​
12.0​
123W​
12078 V 3680​
KBS America​
14.8​
14.6​
14.6​
14.6​
14.3​
14.6​
14.0​
103W​
12080 H 29970​
DW TV​
12.0​
12.0​
12.0​
11.8​
11.9​
11.9​
11.9​
103W​
12145 V 20000​
NHK World​
15.1​
14.9​
14.9​
14.3​
14.5​
14.2​
13.6​
97W​
12053 V 22000​
2M Monde​
13.6​
13.6​
13.2​
13.0​
13.0​
13.0​
12.0​
87W​
11811 H 11150​
LPB​
10.4​
10.4​
10.4​
9.4​
10.0​
9.2​
9.7​
10.2​
34.5W​
11595 H 30000​
Franceinfo:​
10.6​
10.1​
10.6​
10.4​
9.9​
9.7​
N/A​
N/A​
30W​
11884 V 27500​
Cubavision​
14.2​
13.4​
13.8​
13.6​
12.8​
13.2​
13.6​
13.2​

All LNBFs gave very acceptable results.

While the Inverto Black Ultra gave the best results on every single test, the Edision was a close second, tied with the Inverto Home Pro

One thing I noticed is that some of the older LNBFs (X2 and Sadoun, if I remember correctly) had quality reading that were a bit jumpy by a few decimal points, while the Edision, GSP and Invertos were more stable. Not sure that it matters though.

For the next step, I wanted to check the accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator of the Edision LNBF and compare it to a few others. So I aimed for 103W, which has a beacon on 11701 MHz Vertical. I inserted a splitter which has power-passing only on one branch, so that the receiver would power the LNBF and I would get the L-band RF signal without the DC voltage on the other output, and hooked up my RTL-SDR and my laptop. I used SDR# to visualize and measure the frequency of the beacon. The receiver was tuned to NHK World.

In theory, the beacon should be on 11701.0-10600=1101.0 MHz

Inverto Black Ultra: 1100.55 MHz (so LO=10600.45 MHz)

Inverto Home Pro: 1100.70 MHz (so LO=10600.30 MHz)

Edision SL-2: 1101.04 MHz (so LO=10599.96 MHz)

GeoSatPro UL1-PLL: 1101.12 (so LO=10599.88 MHz)

This might sound like it’s rather unimportant, but it can have an impact in 2 cases:

- very low SR, narrow signals. If the signal uses barely 1 MHz of spectrum,, the accuracy of tuning to the right frequency is critical as any deviation could entirely miss the transponder. For a more common 20k or 30k symb/sec signal, it does not matter so much.

- identifying satellites using the beacon frequencies. Obviously if the reading is off, that makes it much more difficult.

Here the winner is clearly the Edision LNBF.

I have to mention however that some of the other LNBFs are a few years old, so that might have a small impact. But still, the accuracy of the LO of the Edision LNBF was really impressive.

So what’s the big picture? Well I’d say that the Edision SL-2 is clearly a winner. While the Inverto Black Ultra gave slightly better signal quality, the LO accuracy of the Edision was a big plus.

Keep in mind also that – as far as I know – the Inverto LNBFs are not commercialized in North America, making them a rather impractical choice (I bought mines during visits to family in Europe).

So altogether, the Edision looks like a perfect choice, and is available at a very reasonable cost.

The Edision LNBF is also made in twin, quad, quatro and octo versions, although I have not seen those at Hypermegasat.com

Thank you Casey for offering this LNBF and giving me a chance to test it and use it!
 
As you may remember, Michael (KE4EST) and Casey (from HyperMegaSat) recently ran a giveaway contest, and the prize was an Edision LNBF. The contest came with a catch: the winner had to commit to writing a review of the LNBF. I was the lucky winner, so now is the time to uphold my end of the deal, and here is my review of the LNBF.

I think we are all familiar with Edision as a brand of great Enigma2 receivers, but it appears they also make LNBFs (and many other things, actually).

The Edision SL-2 is a universal, single-output LNBF. It has the usual 9750 and 10600 LO frequencies, selected by 22kHz tone. It promises a 0.1dB noise figure - which seems fairly standard these days, for what it’s worth.

While the LNBF is overall quite short, the area that goes in the holder is a bit longer than on most, which allows for a bit more adjustment of the focal point, or leaves room for a multifeed retrofit bracket. Definitely a good thing. Talking of multifeed, the diameter of the scalar area is rather large, which could be a limiting factor in multifeed setups.

View attachment 160330

I figured that installing the LNBF and showing a screenshot of a random channel with signal quality would not make a very compelling review (as we all know that there are many other factors at play), so I went a bit further. I went through my boxes of satellite things and gathered a few LNBFs, and did a comparison test.

Setup:

- FortecStar 90cm dish, not motorized

- Edision OSMIO+ receiver running TNAP 4.2

- RTL-SDR dongle with SDRSharp

- power-blocking splitter (for use with the SDR dongle)

List of LNBFs being compared:

- Inverto Black Ultra

- Inverto Home Pro PLL

- Edision SL-2

- GeoSatPro UL1-PLL

- X2 IT-01 single

- Sharp BS1R8EL100A

- Maverick MK1-PLL

- Sadoun KUL1

(in that order in the picture from top left to bottom right)

View attachment 160331

All are universal except the Maverick and Sadoun. The Sharp and the Sadoun LNBFs are from salvaged dishes, I don’t know how old they are.

I tested with some fairly common transponders/channels on some of the most popular FTA satellites available to North-American hobbyists.

Procedure: one satellite at a time, I ran one LNBF at a time, fine-tuning the elevation and azimuth each time, as well as focal position and skew.

I used the “signal finder” app in the receiver to select the transponder and measure the signal quality. Then I swapped the LNBF and fine tuned again and measured, and so on...

Note that while I did this to the best of my ability, we should keep in mind that this is not a highly scientific or rigorous test, and might have a few inaccuracies as I was aiming the dish manually (and we all know that’s not so easy), and while the weather was nice, with mostly blue sky, there was occasional thin clouds that might have had a small attenuating effect on some measurements. Also I added the GeoSatPro LNBF after I had already tested on a few satellites, hence the missing numbers

Here are the results (signal quality in dB):

Satellite​
TP​
Channel​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Standard 10750​
Standard 10750​
Inverto Black Ultra​
Inverto Home Pro PLL​
Edision SL-2
X-2 single IT-01​
GeoSatPro UL1-PLL​
Sharp BS1R8EL100A​
Maverick MK1-PLL​
Sadoun KUL1​
125W​
12180 V 30000​
PBS​
13.7​
13.3​
13.2​
13.2​
12.9​
12.9​
12.0​
123W​
12078 V 3680​
KBS America​
14.8​
14.6​
14.6​
14.6​
14.3​
14.6​
14.0​
103W​
12080 H 29970​
DW TV​
12.0​
12.0​
12.0​
11.8​
11.9​
11.9​
11.9​
103W​
12145 V 20000​
NHK World​
15.1​
14.9​
14.9​
14.3​
14.5​
14.2​
13.6​
97W​
12053 V 22000​
2M Monde​
13.6​
13.6​
13.2​
13.0​
13.0​
13.0​
12.0​
87W​
11811 H 11150​
LPB​
10.4​
10.4​
10.4​
9.4​
10.0​
9.2​
9.7​
10.2​
34.5W​
11595 H 30000​
Franceinfo:​
10.6​
10.1​
10.6​
10.4​
9.9​
9.7​
N/A​
N/A​
30W​
11884 V 27500​
Cubavision​
14.2​
13.4​
13.8​
13.6​
12.8​
13.2​
13.6​
13.2​

All LNBFs gave very acceptable results.

While the Inverto Black Ultra gave the best results on every single test, the Edision was a close second, tied with the Inverto Home Pro

One thing I noticed is that some of the older LNBFs (X2 and Sadoun, if I remember correctly) had quality reading that were a bit jumpy by a few decimal points, while the Edision, GSP and Invertos were more stable. Not sure that it matters though.

For the next step, I wanted to check the accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator of the Edision LNBF and compare it to a few others. So I aimed for 103W, which has a beacon on 11701 MHz Vertical. I inserted a splitter which has power-passing only on one branch, so that the receiver would power the LNBF and I would get the L-band RF signal without the DC voltage on the other output, and hooked up my RTL-SDR and my laptop. I used SDR# to visualize and measure the frequency of the beacon. The receiver was tuned to NHK World.

In theory, the beacon should be on 11701.0-10600=1101.0 MHz

Inverto Black Ultra: 1100.55 MHz (so LO=10600.45 MHz)

Inverto Home Pro: 1100.70 MHz (so LO=10600.30 MHz)

Edision SL-2: 1101.04 MHz (so LO=10599.96 MHz)

GeoSatPro UL1-PLL: 1101.12 (so LO=10599.88 MHz)

This might sound like it’s rather unimportant, but it can have an impact in 2 cases:

- very low SR, narrow signals. If the signal uses barely 1 MHz of spectrum,, the accuracy of tuning to the right frequency is critical as any deviation could entirely miss the transponder. For a more common 20k or 30k symb/sec signal, it does not matter so much.

- identifying satellites using the beacon frequencies. Obviously if the reading is off, that makes it much more difficult.

Here the winner is clearly the Edision LNBF.

I have to mention however that some of the other LNBFs are a few years old, so that might have a small impact. But still, the accuracy of the LO of the Edision LNBF was really impressive.

So what’s the big picture? Well I’d say that the Edision SL-2 is clearly a winner. While the Inverto Black Ultra gave slightly better signal quality, the LO accuracy of the Edision was a big plus.

Keep in mind also that – as far as I know – the Inverto LNBFs are not commercialized in North America, making them a rather impractical choice (I bought mines during visits to family in Europe).

So altogether, the Edision looks like a perfect choice, and is available at a very reasonable cost.

The Edision LNBF is also made in twin, quad, quatro and octo versions, although I have not seen those at Hypermegasat.com

Thank you Casey for offering this LNBF and giving me a chance to test it and use it!

An excellent and thorough review. Thanks! :)
 
As you may remember, Michael (KE4EST) and Casey (from HyperMegaSat) recently ran a giveaway contest, and the prize was an Edision LNBF. The contest came with a catch: the winner had to commit to writing a review of the LNBF. I was the lucky winner, so now is the time to uphold my end of the deal, and here is my review of the LNBF.

I think we are all familiar with Edision as a brand of great Enigma2 receivers, but it appears they also make LNBFs (and many other things, actually).

The Edision SL-2 is a universal, single-output LNBF. It has the usual 9750 and 10600 LO frequencies, selected by 22kHz tone. It promises a 0.1dB noise figure - which seems fairly standard these days, for what it’s worth.

While the LNBF is overall quite short, the area that goes in the holder is a bit longer than on most, which allows for a bit more adjustment of the focal point, or leaves room for a multifeed retrofit bracket. Definitely a good thing. Talking of multifeed, the diameter of the scalar area is rather large, which could be a limiting factor in multifeed setups.

View attachment 160330

I figured that installing the LNBF and showing a screenshot of a random channel with signal quality would not make a very compelling review (as we all know that there are many other factors at play), so I went a bit further. I went through my boxes of satellite things and gathered a few LNBFs, and did a comparison test.

Setup:

- FortecStar 90cm dish, not motorized

- Edision OSMIO+ receiver running TNAP 4.2

- RTL-SDR dongle with SDRSharp

- power-blocking splitter (for use with the SDR dongle)

List of LNBFs being compared:

- Inverto Black Ultra

- Inverto Home Pro PLL

- Edision SL-2

- GeoSatPro UL1-PLL

- X2 IT-01 single

- Sharp BS1R8EL100A

- Maverick MK1-PLL

- Sadoun KUL1

(in that order in the picture from top left to bottom right)

View attachment 160331

All are universal except the Maverick and Sadoun. The Sharp and the Sadoun LNBFs are from salvaged dishes, I don’t know how old they are.

I tested with some fairly common transponders/channels on some of the most popular FTA satellites available to North-American hobbyists.

Procedure: one satellite at a time, I ran one LNBF at a time, fine-tuning the elevation and azimuth each time, as well as focal position and skew.

I used the “signal finder” app in the receiver to select the transponder and measure the signal quality. Then I swapped the LNBF and fine tuned again and measured, and so on...

Note that while I did this to the best of my ability, we should keep in mind that this is not a highly scientific or rigorous test, and might have a few inaccuracies as I was aiming the dish manually (and we all know that’s not so easy), and while the weather was nice, with mostly blue sky, there was occasional thin clouds that might have had a small attenuating effect on some measurements. Also I added the GeoSatPro LNBF after I had already tested on a few satellites, hence the missing numbers

Here are the results (signal quality in dB):

Satellite​
TP​
Channel​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Universal 9750/10600​
Standard 10750​
Standard 10750​
Inverto Black Ultra​
Inverto Home Pro PLL​
Edision SL-2
X-2 single IT-01​
GeoSatPro UL1-PLL​
Sharp BS1R8EL100A​
Maverick MK1-PLL​
Sadoun KUL1​
125W​
12180 V 30000​
PBS​
13.7​
13.3​
13.2​
13.2​
12.9​
12.9​
12.0​
123W​
12078 V 3680​
KBS America​
14.8​
14.6​
14.6​
14.6​
14.3​
14.6​
14.0​
103W​
12080 H 29970​
DW TV​
12.0​
12.0​
12.0​
11.8​
11.9​
11.9​
11.9​
103W​
12145 V 20000​
NHK World​
15.1​
14.9​
14.9​
14.3​
14.5​
14.2​
13.6​
97W​
12053 V 22000​
2M Monde​
13.6​
13.6​
13.2​
13.0​
13.0​
13.0​
12.0​
87W​
11811 H 11150​
LPB​
10.4​
10.4​
10.4​
9.4​
10.0​
9.2​
9.7​
10.2​
34.5W​
11595 H 30000​
Franceinfo:​
10.6​
10.1​
10.6​
10.4​
9.9​
9.7​
N/A​
N/A​
30W​
11884 V 27500​
Cubavision​
14.2​
13.4​
13.8​
13.6​
12.8​
13.2​
13.6​
13.2​

All LNBFs gave very acceptable results.

While the Inverto Black Ultra gave the best results on every single test, the Edision was a close second, tied with the Inverto Home Pro

One thing I noticed is that some of the older LNBFs (X2 and Sadoun, if I remember correctly) had quality reading that were a bit jumpy by a few decimal points, while the Edision, GSP and Invertos were more stable. Not sure that it matters though.

For the next step, I wanted to check the accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator of the Edision LNBF and compare it to a few others. So I aimed for 103W, which has a beacon on 11701 MHz Vertical. I inserted a splitter which has power-passing only on one branch, so that the receiver would power the LNBF and I would get the L-band RF signal without the DC voltage on the other output, and hooked up my RTL-SDR and my laptop. I used SDR# to visualize and measure the frequency of the beacon. The receiver was tuned to NHK World.

In theory, the beacon should be on 11701.0-10600=1101.0 MHz

Inverto Black Ultra: 1100.55 MHz (so LO=10600.45 MHz)

Inverto Home Pro: 1100.70 MHz (so LO=10600.30 MHz)

Edision SL-2: 1101.04 MHz (so LO=10599.96 MHz)

GeoSatPro UL1-PLL: 1101.12 (so LO=10599.88 MHz)

This might sound like it’s rather unimportant, but it can have an impact in 2 cases:

- very low SR, narrow signals. If the signal uses barely 1 MHz of spectrum,, the accuracy of tuning to the right frequency is critical as any deviation could entirely miss the transponder. For a more common 20k or 30k symb/sec signal, it does not matter so much.

- identifying satellites using the beacon frequencies. Obviously if the reading is off, that makes it much more difficult.

Here the winner is clearly the Edision LNBF.

I have to mention however that some of the other LNBFs are a few years old, so that might have a small impact. But still, the accuracy of the LO of the Edision LNBF was really impressive.

So what’s the big picture? Well I’d say that the Edision SL-2 is clearly a winner. While the Inverto Black Ultra gave slightly better signal quality, the LO accuracy of the Edision was a big plus.

Keep in mind also that – as far as I know – the Inverto LNBFs are not commercialized in North America, making them a rather impractical choice (I bought mines during visits to family in Europe).

So altogether, the Edision looks like a perfect choice, and is available at a very reasonable cost.

The Edision LNBF is also made in twin, quad, quatro and octo versions, although I have not seen those at Hypermegasat.com

Thank you Casey for offering this LNBF and giving me a chance to test it and use it!
Great review. Thank you
 
I was able to order an Inverto Black Ultra here in the U.S. about a year ago.. I ordered two of them, and it gave me the extra signal strength i needed for 34.5w . It was shipped from Germany i believe, but all arrived and functioned well.. But, it was expensive... Thank you for that review... I will bookmark this post so that i can reference it in the future. But, when i go to buy another LNBF, i will definitely give the Edison a try.

Thanks again for that awesome review.
 
I was able to order an Inverto Black Ultra here in the U.S. about a year ago.. I ordered two of them, and it gave me the extra signal strength i needed for 34.5w . It was shipped from Germany i believe, but all arrived and functioned well.. But, it was expensive... Thank you for that review... I will bookmark this post so that i can reference it in the future. But, when i go to buy another LNBF, i will definitely give the Edison a try.

Thanks again for that awesome review.
yes exactly, you can buy Invertos from European websites or ebay but it always ends up costing quite a lot because of shipping.
 
WOW Brct203 - that is a great product review! Very informative, full of data. Probably the best review of LNBF's i have seen, or at least that i can remember lol. You went above and beyond testing 8 models on 8 different sats & frequency's. Complete with charts and pictures, A+ work! The Edision performed pretty well from what i can see. The accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator is impressive indeed. I would not have thought of testing that, so glad you did. I know that must have taken some time to do all that testing, and then post all that data, so thank you for this. Maybe you should be the official LNBF tester for Satellite Guys Forums. Then again, maybe you are all tested out for awhile after this. BTW - i also have a FortecStar 90cm dish as my prime Ku Dish. Its been great for years.

:eeek
 
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Reactions: Brct203
WOW Brct203 - that is a great product review! Very informative, full of data. Probably the best review of LNBF's i have seen, or at least that i can remember lol. You went above and beyond testing 8 models on 8 different sats & frequency's. Complete with charts and pictures, A+ work! The Edision performed pretty well from what i can see. The accuracy of the 10600 local oscillator is impressive indeed. I would not have thought of testing that, so glad you did. I know that must have taken some time to do all that testing, and then post all that data, so thank you for this. Maybe you should be the official LNBF tester for Satellite Guys Forums. Then again, maybe you are all tested out for awhile after this. BTW - i also have a FortecStar 90cm dish as my prime Ku Dish. Its been great for years.

:eeek
Thanks for the kind words! That was a bit of work indeed, but that was fun too.

Do you have any plans to import the twin or quad models of the Edision LNBF?

I agree the Fortec Star 90cm is a very good dish!
 
Thanks for the kind words! That was a bit of work indeed, but that was fun too.

Do you have any plans to import the twin or quad models of the Edision LNBF?

I agree the Fortec Star 90cm is a very good dish!
Yes sir.

The Twin model i expect in stock in 10 days, or if not in 10 days, will be by March 1st

The Quad model, no immediate plans, but possibly.
 
I just had my old Amiko finally bit the dust and I ordered a GeoSat Pro UL1 PLL
I hope it does as good as the Edision which I'll find out after the snow passes,if we actually even get any :)
 
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Just read this and ordered one immediately. Need to get my system back up and the current LNBF looks crappy. Don't even remember what it is.
 
I like hands on reviews like this. A lot. So many products are buried in specs. and nobody takes the time to do a comparison. Vendors splat specs on their product site copied from the manufacturer. That's about all you can get.
Awhile back I pondered purchasing a sat. receiver from a European site. With pluggable tuners.
Because blindscanning is very important. There was a choice of tuners. Not one person could give me the chipset soldered to them. Nor if they were blindscan capable. So. Thank you for the very thorough review.
 

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