From my testing I don't believe ride is compression only and same for handling being rebound. I think our adaptive suspension is more complex than that and adjusts these when it senses certain conditions. I believe handing is how the shocks react under certain conditions such as cornering, acceleration, braking, etc.. It seems as though ride is how soft the shocks are under normal driving like going straight down a road. There are sensors that measure things going on, not sure what exactly but probably acceleration force, braking and g force in cornering. I know is true because some folks have had to have the sensors replaced.
I think Ty Davis has some device had can hook up and monitor the voltages and changes in voltages to the shocks during driving. Hopefully he will chime in here.
I did do a bit of data logging and you are correct. The damping rates are always being adjusted on the fly.
There seems to be a bit of damping change that happens in response to road surface. However, I noted the biggest automatic changes come response to brake/steering/gas input. Using any of those vehicle controls, cause the shocks to make a marked change in stiffness immediately. The electronic shocks really try to negate brake dive, body roll, and squat. The automated response to bumps and road surface seem minimal, in comparison (on the relatively smooth roads I was monitoring). I need to go back and test again to say for certain though.
I also spent alot of time trying to figure out exactly what the Mando sliders were controlling.
My 535i had two valves/motors on each shock. One controlled compression and one controlled rebound.
Seeing only one valve on each Stinger shock initially made me think only the rebound was motor controlled on this car.
But testing showed that here to, both rebound and compression was changing.
If I put the ride slider in Mando to 0%, the noise would dip down more during braking and less road texture would enter the cabin while riding. The car would also lean more to the outside of the curve during cornering. I surmised this was reduced compression.
Now, upping the Handling slider to 100%, the car still dived the same during braking. But the rear end would lift too. In corners, the car would still lean to the outside, but now the inside didn't rise (or roll) as high.
This satisfied my thinking that ride was compression and handling is rebound. It made sense by how the car was responding to various settings.
On top of all of that, the ECS is ALWAYS varying the shock valves based on drive input. This happens in all modes of both the stock Kia ECS and Mando ECS settings. I have nothing found a way that the amount of automatic stiffening/softening that occurs can be specified. It's different for each mode stock and in the Mando.
Do note though, that what you are setting with the stock Kia mode selector and with the Mando, seems to be the base shock characteristics. They car still firms or softens from there depending on the way the ECS and/or the Mando see fit according to their programming (that we can't change) sees fit.
Put simply, we can set the base shock values but the "Adaptive" function still works works on top of that.
This is the best I can tell from logging data and feeling what's going on. I'm not a chassis engineer, but have had with manually adjustable or electronic shocks on most of my recent vehicles. I may be in err or missing something here. It would be nice to get some expert insight or at least some detailed info from Mando to clear things up a bit.
You know, now that I think about it...
We may have our very own suspension expert right here on the forum.
I think his name is Steve. I recall that he was a chassis/shock tuner in his previous professional life, for a major automotive company.
He always seemed to grasp what the Stingers suspension weak spots are and how to fix them. I think he ended up getting Eibach springs and maybe later swaybars. I'll try to get his username and tag him. It may be beneficial to the community for us to take up a collection and send him a Mando for his Stinger. He certainly would be in a good position to tune the car (within the limits of the ECS) as he does this for a living.
I was able to get the rear where I wanted it. Smooth, taut, and flat. But that darn front suspension always managed to have some float or bounce I couldn`t tune out. Let me go through the old messages and see if I can find that guy's username. At the least, he may be able to give us some tips that set us in the right direction.
***edit***
Found him.!
Steve Ostrowski
What are your thoughts here? Anything we should know about the relation between rebound/compression that we should note to create a more stable ride? 
). Love the name ... MANDO!!!
