Most know that when the mood suits me, I run an SDR to give access to the over-the-air Artisan Radio signals.
I've experimented a lot with an RTL-SDR (both V3 and V4). These things work great for FM signals, and the server software that I use (accessible through most common browsers) can even decode RDS.
I've never had much luck with AM, however. I was using 1620Khz and the signals were noisy and fairly weak - I had to have the SDR antenna very close to the Talking Sign (my AM transmitter) antenna.
I've been broadcasting on 1490Khz recently, and decided to fire up the SDR again. To my surprise, the SDR could barely receive the signal. It could be heard on 1620, though, the same as before. I knew that this brand of SDR was relatively deaf on the lower shortwave frequencies, but I didn't realize how deaf it was on the AM broadcast band, and how quickly the sensitivity dropped off.
So, armed with that information, I'm going to try out another SDR, the SDRPlay. Apparently, it is capable of receiving these low frequencies much better (as well as having a much broader receiving frequency range of up to 10 Mhz, as opposed to 2 Mhz), so we'll give it a go.