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New Update Has Arrived


Dan(NM)

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10 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Put another way, the only way a detector can detect all possible targets is a pure all metal machine without ground balance. No filters at all. Simply adding ground balance causes targets to be lost. Adding any discrimination causes more targets to be lost. The filters are imperfect due to the near infinite overlap between ferrous, non-ferrous, and ground readings.

Yep, I recognize we are not dealing with a true all metal mode machine in Equinox even when "AM" mode is invoked removing discrimination but not raw signal processing and filtering.  But the thing that I found surprising is that I never would have realized that FE=0 does not turn off the filter without this update being released.  The only time iron bias appears to be "off" is single frequency because I think iron bias filter relies on the multi-frequency input of Multi IQ to function, but even then, that is just as educated guess because ML does not clearly state there is no iron bias filtering in single, all I know is that iron bias "is not available" in single which could be referring to the filter adjustment not the filter.

I know this is repetitive and in the weeds, but for perspective, I always thought of iron bias as analogous to the XP Deus silencer filter (which supposedly breaks up or filters out mixed ferrous signals and has an adjustable level that is also tied to the recovery speed setting).  That silencer filter has a "0" setting but it also has a "-1" setting which XP describes as "off".  I usually set it to "-1" because I do not want to experience inadvertent non-ferrous masking due to the silencer filter.  I thought I was doing the same on Equinox by setting FE=0, but apparently not.  Again, I am down in the weeds here as I tend to go there due to my engineering and software background. 

I will end by saying that in a practical sense, the fact than neither the FE nor F2 iron bias filters can be truly "turned off" is really not a big deal because it appears the filtering is "minimal" and has little effect on masking at those low settings, but it is, I think, a fact that advanced detectorists should be aware of because the ML documentation is a little ambiguous in that regard.

Again, Steve's graphic visualization of the two filters posted above has been very helpful for me and I really appreciate that info as it will affect how I apply them in different situations.

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8 hours ago, mn90403 said:

The thing I like about the update and I noticed it the first night I used it is that the targets sound better.

Is this experience independent of whether you're using FE or FE2 settings?

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4 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Is this experience independent of whether you're using FE or FE2 settings?

Yes

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12 hours ago, mn90403 said:

I have been out every day since the update came.  I've watched a few of the videos where it shows the iron ring being ignored with settings.  That impressed me.

My 'results' of FE/FE2 adjusting amount to 'no change' in audio when it comes to bobby pins, iron screws, iron coins, paper clips or just about anything else including bottle caps.  I hear all that stuff if I'm in all metal in dry and wet sand.  I adjusted today with FE at 0 and FE2 at 1-9.  I've had FE2 at 0 and FE and 1-9.  Yesterday I used the 11 inch coil and today the 15 inch coil.  I like to dig 95% of my targets on the beach.  I'm surprised by what I find up to 10% of the time.  It is not what I expect.

The thing I like about the update and I noticed it the first night I used it is that the targets sound better.  That includes cheap rings and corroded pennies.

This afternoon I found 4 rings (top 4) and one 13g silver chain with the 15 inch coil. (I really like chains now more than rings!)  I did have to dig some falsing holes with the 15 and sometimes a coin will completely disappear.  It is why I call the 15 a finicky coil.  Most of the targets are the result of some wave energy finally coming with some wind to push these targets into an area where I detect.

The 4 rings at the bottom were found with the 11' coil in the same general beach.  On that hunt I also found many more coins.  The total time for the two hunts is about 6 hours.  I'll go back in the morning.

 

IMG_20190929_212054.jpg

I went back to my spot this morning and there were already two detectorists on it.   No more goodies this time.

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Haven't had a chance yet to test the new update myself, but based on what I'm reading here I think a good strategy to try will be setting F2=0 or 2 to unmask those difficult targets, and set User Profile to F2=9 to quickly recheck targets for bottle caps and other iron falsing.

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I am in the same situation as Steve H with high mineralization. I generally leave my 600 on Iron Bias 0 and will occasionally switch to 2 if I hit an interesting deep target that I want more information about. Here in my area, the absolute worst bottle cap for giving NO indication of iron even with the All Metal button engaged are Coronas. With v1.75, Coronas would give a slight iron tone near the edge of the bottle cap as I moved the coil away at Fe=2. With v2.0 F2=2, I get obvious iron tone anywhere on Corona crown caps. These results were on actual wild bottle caps still in the ground, found today using the Nox 600. So, some progress has actually been made with this update it seems. Love the backlight adjustment too.

 

Jeff 

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My first impression of FE-2 0 is that I see no going back to FE 0 unless needed for a specific situation.  This view could change since it was only a 3 hour hunt.  Everyone’s experience might be different depending on location and the way you hunt.  I am an audio hunter and was impressed with what I experienced yesterday.  From what I read before going out, I was expecting a difficult hunt where I would have to ease into the new more aggressive settings..  I generally hunt with very aggressive settings  and am used to lots of noise. The new more aggressive FE-2 0 setting actually seemed to tame my detector audio. Dig decisions were much easier and more clear to me.  

Bryan

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On 9/30/2019 at 1:29 PM, Noah (FL) said:

Thanks for posting this graphic Steve!!   I thought this was what NASA-Tom was trying to explain about the new F2 settings but I’m a better visual learner and this graphic is 👍👍

Thankfully Minelab simply added the new options instead of replacing the old ones, so we can choose what works best for each of us, plus compare more easily without having to go to the old version and back again.

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That graphic settled for me some of the complex Fe/f2 "equivalence" scale, It also got me curious 

The F2 scale shows it to be broader than Fe, therefore F2 must have courser iron bias adjustments than Fe. However, according to Tom, given that F2@4 is identical to Fe@0, and further given, that each downward adjustment in F2 below 4 are finely stepped decrements of -.25. This must indicate that changing bias in the center range - near default - will have a greater  impact on processing and much finer processing on the lower end. Tom did not mention much if anything about the higher end properties, but I would guess that In reality, the graphic may be more accurate if was drawn as a bell shaped curve. For giggles, I'd like to see the undisclosed Fe and F2 bell graphs superimposed.

FWIW, three days in the field totaling about 10 hours, I went way out of my comfort zone with F2. Aa few hours in lighting and snow and foil-lined fleece jacket probably didn't help on the first night, but when I covered a dime there was no doubt. The rest of my hours were spent in bed of iron conditions. Sticking with F2 was very harsh, and the gap from hunting park/school to an old homesite had me making quite a few adjustments- not only iron bias. I will say that when running quieted, running F2@9 sounded like I had cotton in my earphones. F2 @ 0 was falsing off hundreds of iron bits, square nails, rusted cans, but would sometimes resolve the TID into a dig tone without benefits. Nevertheless, just like I got comfortable running Fe@0  I will be leaning toward operating F2 with no-to-low bias as the norm.

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