Top: observation of Vela X-1 (XMM-Newton ObsID 0111030101) made with the standard Timing Mode (red data points) and how the same observation would have looked like in the Modified Timing Mode (orange data points). Bottom: residuals of fitting these data with an absorbed power-law (red). Applying the same model and the standard Timing Mode matrix produces the residuals shown in orange, illustrating the softening. The residuals of a fit with the Modified Timing Mode response matrix (blue) agree with the Timing Mode residuals.