The problem with 'spectrum'

The 'spectrum' function from TISEAN most likely needs to be rewritten in GNU Octave or there is no need for it. This is because linking to it does not seem like a good idea. This is because there is a suspicion it does not produce good results for some data inputs. 

1. Where 'spectrum' works
First it is important to note that 'spectrum' from TISEAN is basically a GNU Octave 'abs(fft(:))' with additional data manipulation/adjustment. This additional work is not an elegant one-line solution, which might warrant designating a separate function that would translate the Octave respective function into a form similar to the output of 'spectrum'. Although this might not be necessary since the data obtained from the Octave function is very similar to 'spectrum' (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Unadjusted data from Octave

After adjusting the data (which was done by analyzing the source code to determine what actions the TISEAN programs perform) it was possible to get a close fit with a small difference. An example of this type of adjustment is listed below (Fig. 2)

Fig. 2 Adjusted data from Octave.

As it is not a one-line fix to convert ' abs (fft (:))' into a similar format as 'spectrum' it will not be shown in the post. It is available in the 'tests/spectrum/test_spectrum.m' function located on the tisean package repo (here).

2. Where the problem lies
The problem is that when 'spectrum' is used to create a step response its results vary substantially from what is produced by Octave. The way the data looks suggests that there is something wrong with 'spectrum'. The adjusted version is situated below.

For the most part, the data fits perfectly, but there seems to be a shadow on the bottom of the TISEAN data. If it is the case that there is a problem with 'spectrum' then its code should not be used in the future Octave package and should be rewritten or omitted (as similar results can be obtained from a simple Octave call).