Comparison of the populations in the $(f_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f},F({\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}))$ plane for the ‘low spins, strong tides’ (in blue) and ‘low spins, weak tides’ (in orange) scenarios, where $F({\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}))=-\mathrm{sgn}({\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}){\text{\hspace{0.17em}log}}_{10}(\mid {\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}/{10}^4{\mathrm{y}\mathrm{r}}^{-2}\mid {)}^{-1}$. This quantity has the same sign and monotonic behaviour as ${\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}$. The black lines in the upper and right panels show the result in the ‘GWs only’ scenario. Accreting systems are typically those with ${\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}$ < 0. We recall that we keep only DWDs that have f_GW,f ≥ 0.1 mHz in the ‘GWs only’ case, which explains why the distribution goes to 0 below this limit and for small positive values of ${\dot{f}}_{\mathrm{G}\mathrm{W},f}$.