Suspension Data Acquisition

How does one read those charts? I mean, I know what they're showing but there's a lot of data density there. Is the shape of the envelope what you're looking at?

Yeah mainly the shape of the lower envelope in the first image compared to the second. 

Yeah the shape of the curve can tell you how damped it is, eg an overdamped system might peak quite early in the travel then slow down while an underdamped bike will stay high or even accelerate further in to the travel. Can also be used to see how ramp up or bottom out systems are working and also rebound damping. Peak rebound speeds normally happen just after it reaches bottom out and is extending, so you can see if low rebound speeds are being caused by too much damping or if it isn't reaching far enough in to the stroke to be generating those speeds. Or if you are getting high speeds closer to the middle of the travel on the return stroke, it would probably be a sign of a soft spring using excessively light damping to achieve those speeds

Honestly I find the BYB plots quite messy and hard to see/filter the data clearly, I wish there was an easier way to customise the views in the software. I've used heatmaps in the past to show a similar thing because you can show the density a lot clearer and it doesn't get lost in a stack of lines. This is one example, the colourscale needed some work but I felt like it packed more info in to one view

Jumping in to make a couple of points.

1. You can't actually compare the first image to the second and reliably deduce an answer for most questions as you have said they are different trails, different riders, different suspension and surely different settings/setups, different durations and different environments. It doesn't help that the plots are different scales. These 2 images show absolutely everything different (maybe the ambient temperature was the same???), and so any difference in output could be from any difference in input.
2. Just because something is obvious to see in the plots, doesn't mean there's an obvious reason/fix. "Obvious from the second image that the rebound in the rear could do with speeding up". That is not a fact. The fact is that the front/green sensor sees higher rebound speeds than the rear/white sensor.

When you make comparisons you generally need to know what questions you're asking before you record your data, so that you can setup the inputs to give you outputs showing what you're wanting to compare. 

I'll take a stab and say that the trail in the first image had a lot more jumps. This is another factor that can make the plots look different without giving helpful info - why does it matter what the suspension/wheels are doing when they are airborne?

Duration (imagine a 2 minute vs a 5 minute descent/recording) is such a simple difference that changes what looks obvious, plus once you have too much data (too long duration) the plot gets overwhelmed and you just see a solid colour.

As @TheSuspensionLabNZ has pointed out, a heatmap helps give more understandable data. Even just having each plotted point mostly transparent is a simple improvement as you don't so quickly lose the data into a solid mass (limited to the scale of a single colour rather than across many like the heatmap). At least go the scatter over the line plots in BYB when trying to analyse so you're only seeing known data, the line versions are better when explaining what the data is recording.

Hi, 

New to telemetry, slowly learning but mainly leaning on BYB's auto tune function. Getting back into MTBing is a bit of a midlife crisis thing for me so I three years back on a bike and I still don't have a great feel for suspension. My feel is it's working or it's not hence the telemetry. 

I have been learning a lot through the auto tune function in BYB but I don't have the confidence to deviate too much so I was wondering how people felt about the auto tune suggestions for gravity / DH? It seems very much the school of fast, very little low speed compression with some high speed damping to balance. I am curious to if people deviate from the auto tune suggestions and if they think there is a better direction? I'm in SoCal so riding hard pack, dry, dusty, riding gravity / DH. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and would be amazing if anyone was willing to share numbers they like to hit.

My second question is I am curious to trying a damper first approach but I don't really know what direction to go in compared to BYB's suggestions. Is everything damped or does the rebound stay fast and only the compression is slowed? Again if anyone was willing to share any numbers in what they think is a good direction that would be amazing! 

Thanks!!!