About scan data

What spectrum scans do in Coord — where they come from, where they’re stored, and every feature they feed.

A scan is a measured picture of the RF environment: frequency versus amplitude, captured at the venue. Coordinating against real measurements instead of assumptions is what separates a plan that works from one that looks nice.

What scan data feeds

• The plot — every selected scan draws as a trace behind your frequencies (Choosing which scan files a zone displays).
• Calculations — with the exclusion threshold enabled, candidates measuring above the threshold are rejected automatically.
• Candidate quality — the candidate list shows each candidate’s measured amplitude, so you can prefer the quietest options.
• TV channel decisions — the scan shows which auto-activated channels are actually receivable (Enabling/disabling TV channels).
• The monitoring view — live amplitude badges per frequency in the coordination list (Enabling the monitoring view).
• Health Checks — threshold violations appear as issues (Running a zone Health Check).

Where scans come from

1. Upload your own — scan with any supported analyzer (Shure, Sennheiser, Wisycom, Lectrosonics, Keysight, Rohde & Schwarz, Siglent, Rigol, Owon, TinySA, Harogic, Aaronia, WinRadio, and more, or a generic frequency, amplitude CSV). See Uploading and managing scan files.
2. Live scan (SoundBase Desktop) — connect an analyzer and stream a live trace; save any sweep as a scan file with Save Snapshot. Devices are assigned per zone, so a site can run several analyzers at once. See Connecting a live scan device.
3. The community database — search scans other users shared anonymously near your location. See Searching the community scan database.

How scans are scoped

Scan files are stored per site — every zone in the site can use them — while each zone chooses which scans it displays (and calculates against, when the exclusion threshold is on), with per-zone trace colors and dBm offsets. Files can also be applied to additional sites from the file manager’s Applies to… menu.

Quality matters

A scan is only as useful as its capture: use the antenna system the show will use, scan from where the receivers will live, and keep the step size fine (0.025 MHz or better) so the exclusion threshold has real data points to test against. See Indications of a good scan and Collecting high-quality scan files with tinySA.