Did Minelab Handicap The Equinox?

[GB_Amateur]

10 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

...The tonal nuances tell me more about the nature of a target than a number on a screen.

It's taken me a long time to appreciate what Chase says here, even though he's been saying it (repeatedly) for about as long as he's been a member of this site.  I missed out on the analog epoch of (quality) metal detectors and it's taken me four years of repeated reminders that digits aren't the be-all, end-all.  I will go on one detour, though.  Equinox 5-tone mode will give considerable information in tonal qualities.  Is it as much as you get in multi-tone?  I'm not going to say that because I have no idea, but if you're like me and 50 tones doesn't fit your ear/brain, set the tone breaks in 5-tone to meaningful places and listen to the sweet music.

I tend towards dig-it-all (where 'all' excludes iron, and sometimes the low end of the foil zone) so I don't get too concerned with super accurate target ID's.  I don't have many bottle caps to deal with since I don't hunt the beaches.  I doubt there is a detectorist alive who is good at audible discrimination who hasn't done a lot of dig-it-all detecting.  That's what teaches you what tonal qualities are worth digging and which should be ignored.

The only detector right now on my radar as a potentially missed opportunity is the White's V3I with all its graphics candy.  I love graphs!  It's the weight that shied me away, but maybe the balance of the V3i makes up for the extra weight.  Anyway, I'm on a detector acquisition 'diet' right now and the longer I wait, not only do the prices of existing detectors drop but so do the choices of new ones.  😉

 

 

[Mark Gillespie]

I'm 100% satisfied with mine the way it is.

 

[cjc]

Thats true--lot of great stuff but not perfect.  Makes me think of the DFX where you had a Normalization control that gave you exactly that choice --based upon you chosen FQ. 

That low range is a bit of a "dog's breakfast" though if you are a gold hunter.

cjc

[coinhunterseth]

On 11/19/2019 at 8:26 PM, GB_Amateur said:

It's taken me a long time to appreciate what Chase says here, even though he's been saying it (repeatedly) for about as long as he's been a member of this site.  I missed out on the analog epoch of (quality) metal detectors and it's taken me four years of repeated reminders that digits aren't the be-all, end-all.  I will go on one detour, though.  Equinox 5-tone mode will give considerable information in tonal qualities.  Is it as much as you get in multi-tone?  I'm not going to say that because I have no idea, but if you're like me and 50 tones doesn't fit your ear/brain, set the tone breaks in 5-tone to meaningful places and listen to the sweet music.

The only detector right now on my radar as a potentially missed opportunity is the White's V3I with all its graphics candy.  I love graphs!  It's the weight that shied me away, but maybe the balance of the V3i makes up for the extra weight.  Anyway, I'm on a detector acquisition 'diet' right now and the longer I wait, not only do the prices of existing detectors drop but so do the choices of new ones.  😉

 

 

I found the V3i to be ergonomically pretty decent, no worse than my AT Pro even though it's heavier. It's certainly a lot heavier than the Equinox though.

I don't get my information from the tones themselves. 50 tones seems to me just a way to audibly hear the numbers. I tend to focus on the way the tone shapes itself, is it stretched, short, loud, soft, etc. I don't know to what extent the Equinox is going to allow me to do this though. So far it seems better audibly than the V3i, but not nearly as nuanced as an AT Pro.

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, coinhunterseth said:

I found the V3i to be ergonomically pretty decent, no worse than my AT Pro even though it's heavier. It's certainly a lot heavier than the Equinox though.

I don't get my information from the tones themselves. 50 tones seems to me just a way to audibly hear the numbers. I tend to focus on the way the tone shapes itself, is it stretched, short, loud, soft, etc. I don't know to what extent the Equinox is going to allow me to do this though. So far it seems better audibly than the V3i, but not nearly as nuanced as an AT Pro.

Seth,

I find the Deus audio to be more expressive and nuanced than Equinox but the Equinox audio gives pretty good information in its own right.  I am extracting the audio "shape" information exactly as you describe to get target info, e.g.  rise and fall times, duration, and whether the tone sounds hollow or full and tone "stability" in 50 tones which correlates directly with TID stability and can clue you in as to whether that mid or high tone is a likely keeper or likely junk (still need to dig it ito be 100% certain).  The individual fundamental tone pitch just corresponds to individual low, medium, or high TID numbers and other than that I don't get much from tone fundamental pitch itself and in 50 tones you really can't differentiate individual IDs other than low, medium, or high without looking at the screen for the actual ID (anyone who says otherwise either has perfect pitch or is lying).  What I am mainly looking for is the Equinox to lock in on a repeatable, desirable tone through appropriate coil manipulation (i.e., short wiggle over the target) and the high recovery speed of Equinox (or Deus) enables that over just about any other detector, including the AT Pro.  I suspect the reasons we respectively give the audio nod to our other detectors (Deus in my case and AT Pro in yours) vs. Equinox is that we really learned what the audio was telling us with those detectors before Equinox arrived and so we are learning a similar but different detector language now with Equinox.  I find the two detectors compliment each other in my case.  In some situations the Deus will excel over Equinox and in other situations it is just the opposite. And as far as the audio is concerned, I now find myself able to seemlessly switch back and forth between the two detectors from an audio ID standpoint without thinking about it.  Whereas, early on, it took some acclimation time when switching off between them to get used to the different audio response between Deus and Equinox.  I guess I am fluent in at least two different detector languages now.  Bilingual detecting, lol.

[Cal_Cobra]

On 11/19/2019 at 5:26 PM, GB_Amateur said:

Equinox 5-tone mode will give considerable information in tonal qualities.  Is it as much as you get in multi-tone?  I'm not going to say that because I have no idea, but if you're like me and 50 tones doesn't fit your ear/brain, set the tone breaks in 5-tone to meaningful places and listen to the sweet music.

I forced myself to use 50 tones from day one, simply because I knew of the tonal nuances full tones provide on Minelabs earlier generation multi-frequency machines.   I think I can answer the question you posed around 5-tones conveying the tonal equation that 50 tones convey.  One particular hunt I was on in a desert area with heavy alkali soils, so heavy that my Impact couldn't even auto ground grab there, a manual ground grab would equate to what you'd expect at a salt water beach (believe it would GB to 20).  The Equinox 800 in field mode was really struggling at this site the first time I took it there, so I decided to try beach mode, forgetting that it defaulted to 5-tone.  After about a half hour, I really didn't like what I perceived to be artificial or clipped audio characteristics of 5-tones, it was noticeably different.  Once I switched beach mode to 50 tones, my finds rate increased significantly, the audio was smoother and less contrived. 

Audio is a major mental factor.  I'll give you another example, not related to metal detecting.  I'm a big wine fan, and I used to be pretty involved in the Sonoma and Napa wine scene.  A group of friends went to a wine makers house for a wine tasting dinner party, he oddly lived in an old 1800's church.  He enjoys subjecting his quests to an experiment with wine and music (liquid music as he calls it).  He first pours everyone some cheap wine, nothing completely vile, but definitely not something you'd particularly enjoy as a rule of thumb.  This is a blind test, we have no idea what we're drinking.  He then plays some really beautiful music (sorry I can't recall what it was, but I believe it was classical music), and everyone discussed their thoughts on the wine.  The feedback was predominantly positive.  For the next blind test, he pours everyone some of the best wine he makes, $100 a bottle wine, amazing juice, but this time he plays total headbanger angry music, and everyone hates the wine.   I feel this example of how audio affects the way your brain processes information is also true of metal detecting.  

[GB_Amateur]

Lots of good points are being made by posters on this thread.

There's one thing I should make clear as it may have slipped through the cracks of this conversation:  you can use one mode or selection of settings for your search and switch to another to add more detail when you get a promising target.  I've used 5-tones for the initial search and switched to 50-tones in just this way (but then after dig/not, back to 5-tones for more searching).

If I had an Equinox 600 I would be much less likely to use 5-tones.  A big plus for me in owning the 800 is that I can choose the tone volumes, tone audio frequencies (pitches), and especially tone breaks from a large spectrum of options (~25 of each).  The multiples of 10 ID' per tone break which are the default on the 800 and locked on the 600 (maybe there is an exception for ferrous-to-nonferrous break, tone, volume) don't work well for US coins, especially the (cupro-)nickel 5 cent piece.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of using 50 tones.  You guys who take advantage of them (and to great success) are probably better off there.  My target audience is for those who repeatedly struggle with them (as I have).  You're not confining yourself to the novice division by avoiding 50 tones.  I like Chase's analogy to human language.  Not everyone has the same propensity for learning a second language.  It's a judgement call as to whether to try and continue with your native language alone or add another.  (Obviously there are many more considerations, particularly social, for learning a second human language.)  It's possible time can be more efficiently spent on other things than trying to master 50 tones.

As always, it's nice to have options.

 

 

[coinhunterseth]

In my mind, 50 tones just adds more tones to listen to; unless the processing is different I don't see how it could be more nuanced in the way that I listen to it. Right now I have mine in 5 tones, but zones 2&3 have the same tone, as do 4&5, which means I'm basically in 3 tones. 3 tones is what I'm used to and prefer. Since I dig everything nonferrous most of the time anyway I don't really need more.

[Chase Goldman]

The tone stability (or more accurately, lack of it) as it relates to iffy signal target ID in 50 tones is the advantage to me.   Imagine variable ID within a tone bin, you can’t hear that in anything less than 50 tones unless it crosses the the tone break between bins and will only see it if you are looking at the display.  To me that is an additional advantageous nuance or layer to tonality brought by 50 tones that is important for the type of relic hunting that I do and where I do it (super hot soil, typically).  
 

As I said previously, as far target ID audio is concerned for “non-iffy” targets, all I care about is low (ferrous), medium or high (non-ferrous), so I don’t need 50 tones in that respect and I know all that noise is is not everyone’s cup of tea.

5 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

There's one thing I should make clear as it may have slipped through the cracks of this conversation:  you can use one mode or selection of settings for your search and switch to another to add more detail when you get a promising target.

 Totally agree and I often use this approach.

[GB_Amateur]

5 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

The tone stability (or more accurately, lack of it) as it relates to iffy signal target ID in 50 tones is the advantage to me.   Imagine variable ID within a tone bin, you can’t hear that in anything less than 50 tones unless it crosses the the tone break between bins and will only see it if you are looking at the display.

That makes sense to a certain extent.  However, in my experience (after finding the sweetspot of response) no matter how repeatable I make my coil motion, most of the time (and always with weaker response ==> small, not near surface targets) the TID varies at least one or two values (often many more even for desirable targets), which in 50 tone does deliver variation in pitch.  I guess it's difficult to ask for a yes/no, either/or answer when you are painting a multidimensional mental picture.  But let me give an example from my 5-tone settings:

My highest bin is 24 and above.  If you get all your tones (when operating in 50-tones) in this region but with TID's varying lets say 25-->35 does that make your decision to dig different than if it's a consistent 30-31?