Paul wrote:Re: Trace visibility on waterfall:- The attached is the best that I have been able to achieve using contrast and brightness controls - should I expect better?
A couple of points: Firstly, there is a problem at narrow sweep widths due to the DC spike. This is being addressed and was one of the reasons sweep widths of less than 10KHz have been disabled. The next release will use a non-zero IF which will eliminate the DC problem.
Secondly, at such a narrow sweep width, you might get a cleaner result by increasing the number of FFT bins - I see you are currently set at 16384. I would suggest 32768, or even 65536. This will increase the spectral resolution, but of course, with an added speed penalty - no free lunch here.
Thirdly, it might be worth enabling averaging in the Display panel, try an initial setting of 4 and go from there. The downside would be a reduction in magnitude response speed, once again, no free lunch.
None these really address your question regarding waterfall image quality though, they were just mentioned in passing. It looks as if there is still some range left on the brightness control, I would try reducing the brightness a bit. From what I can see, it looks like you have reached full saturation on the white level, reducing contrast might help as well, although reading your post, it seems you might have tried this already. From my own experience I would have thought you would get a better display than that which you have posted.
The waterfall display is being overhauled, along with a lot of other code. I'll be offering the user an optional colour display instead of fixed monochrome. The waterfall's dynamic range will also be increased which should result in a better display as well.
If none of the above gives you a better display, please let me know, it might be that the waterfall needs some attention.