How can I set the y axis range of the second subplot to e.g. [0,1000] ? The FFT plot of my data (a column in a text file) results in a (inf.?) spike so that the actual data is not visible.

pylab.ylim([0,1000])

has no effect, unfortunately. This is the whole script:

# based on http://www.swharden.com/blog/2009-01-21-signal-filtering-with-python/
import numpy, scipy, pylab, random

xs = []
rawsignal = []
with open("test.dat", 'r') as f:
      for line in f:
            if line[0] != '#' and len(line) > 0:
                xs.append( int( line.split()[0] ) )
                rawsignal.append( int( line.split()[1] ) )

h, w = 3, 1
pylab.figure(figsize=(12,9))
pylab.subplots_adjust(hspace=.7)

pylab.subplot(h,w,1)
pylab.title("Signal")
pylab.plot(xs,rawsignal)

pylab.subplot(h,w,2)
pylab.title("FFT")
fft = scipy.fft(rawsignal)
#~ pylab.axis([None,None,0,1000])
pylab.ylim([0,1000])
pylab.plot(abs(fft))

pylab.savefig("SIG.png",dpi=200)
pylab.show()

Other improvements are also appreciated!