SteelCan

As the header mentions, the specs for a hill ride are different depending on which software I use.
SportTx shows 8587'/8614' of elevation (ascend/descend) *** update 84.91 miles
TrainingC shows 7748'/7725' 84.91 miles
*** update. Same distance for both. SportT seems to always add a ghost lap in the Splits view. In this case 2.93 miles with a split time of 6 seconds.

Background:
Garmin 705 w2.9 firmware
"every second" recording
Pause @2mph
Auto tire distance
elevation correction plugin installed

SportTrack settings > Analysis > Activity Time - BOTH are checked.
In the data smoothing, I have elevation UNCHECKED.

Anyone point-out as to why the programs are interpreting the numbers from the SAME .tcx file so differently?
(using the latest updated software for both)

gregf83 

Sporttracks provide an answer in their Elevation FAQ. Basically, they use different algorithms to calculate elevation changes.

exRunner

The distance would concern me more. 3.2% difference is a lot for a GPS device.

zerotopanmass

There's an elevation correction plugin for SportTracks that uses SRTM elevation data. Works really well...

SteelCan

This is a quirk that has also annoyed me.
Seems there is always an EXTRA "split" that appears in SportTracks with some distance (in this case, the exact difference between the two programs of 2.93 miles). Total split time is 6seconds. The avg speed is never in the maximum totals on the MAIN listing which btw was 1569mph :-)

# Split Dist Split time SplitSpd AvgCad Avg HR Max Cad Max HR
1 75.96 5:23:48 14.1 43.1 138 (76%) 86.1 197 (108%)
2 8.95 38:05 14.1 47.2 130 (71%) 71.7 147 (81%)
3 2.93 0:06 1,569.0 blank 110 (60%) 1.7 110 (61%)

CCrew

Yeah, I've found that even that makes major changes to what the Garmin says. Hard to really know what to believe.

umd

Adding up elevation is an art, not a science. Every program does it differently. In your case you turned smoothing off in ST, so TC is likely reporting less because it is doing some form of smoothing. As for which one is correct... I can't really say. Likely TC will be better with some form of smoothing than ST with it off. I've pretty much stopped caring what the number is, but my general experien e I. The past was to go with the number off the unit itself. Unfortunately that doesn't get saved anywhere, once you reset or download, it's gone.

SteelCan

I did have that plug-in installed.(but thank you for the suggestion)

So did I (unit itself) for "normal" rides as the elevation doesn't mean a whole lot. In this case, I was trying to get the most accurate elevation possible. This was for Philadelphia's Dirty Dozen that was organized by Colin Sandberg. 13 of the steepest climbs in the Philly area - modeled after Danny Chew's famous Dirty Dozen in Pittsburgh.

Surprising that the 705 doesn't store elevation in the history like it does other specs even after you download the .tcx file.

umd

For a ride with a bunch of climbs, the best thing to do if you want the most accurate number is to take the start and end elevation of each climb, subtract to get the gain from that climb, then add all the climbs together.