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Someone Convince Me The Nox 800 Is The Machine To Buy!!!


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I think it is an interesting discussion from a detector nerd sense and when considering detector features but not sure it really plays into day-to-day detecting much from the standpoint of having to commit it to memory. 

I only put it up there because of the repeated "dissatisfaction" I hear regarding the 50 segment ID scale of detectors like the Nox vs. 100 segment scales [not in this thread but elsewhere on the forum].  It illustrates that one is not necessarily "better" than the other because of the combination of accuracy, precision, and stability which can vary and "more numbers" can actually be a drawback on certain detectors that don't filter well. 

I also find it interesting that I hear a lot of people complain about compressed scales but are perfectly happy to work with 5, 3, or 2 tones vs. 50 or Full tones.  You typically get A LOT more information from audio nuances than numbers on a screen.  Tone purity, duration, variation, how the tone rises and falls tell you a hell of a lot about the target.  A lot more than you can get from a 2 digit number on a screen.  I hunt mostly by tone and use the screen as just another data point or to back up what I am hearing.  I don't care as much about the specific number as I do about the range it falls in (ferrous, mid conductor, high conductor) [that's why I never bother with memorizing TID charts] and how stable a repeatable the number is and whether I can manipulate my coil swing into a wiggle to lock onto the desirable tone/TID.  It is almost as if (but not quite) having 50 tones is more important than having 50 numbers.  Could I get away with 5 numbers.  Maybe, if the tones were good  but a 50 seems perfectly fine to me and 100 doesn't seem necessary.  On a different note, I think 2-D 4 digit TID on the FBS+ machines (CTX, eTrac) is very useful because you are getting a conductivity number AND a ferrous component.  These two numbers together tell you a lot more than conductivity alone and enable very sophisticated discrimination patterns.

Also  to be clear in 50 tones on the Nox or full tones on the Deus, I couldn't tell you the difference between a nickel and pristine pull tab from tone pitch alone (where pitch defines tone ID) but I might be able to better tell you if the tab were bent and causing tone ID bounce (Nox flutey tones) or distortion (Deus full tones) vs. 3 or 5 tones on the same machines combined with a visual target ID to make a dig decision, if that makes sense.  In other words 50 tones + 50 visual TID segments is more useful to me than 5 tones + 100 visual ID segments.

That is not to say you can't get that nuanced audio information from 2 or 3 tones, you can, depending on the detector - but if you want as much info as possible, I think having the choice of more tones or highly variable tones on the right detector gives you that more than target ID numbers.  In fact, I like to use VCO pitch on my Deus and Gold mode VCO (or even pinpoint tone on the Nox) on my Nox which gives zero Tone ID info but plenty of info about the nature of the target (depth, shape (symmetry), and footprint (size)).  In that case visual target ID becomes "more" important in a sense, but I am still looking for ID ranges rather than precise numbers.

The key is getting the right combo of audio and target ID working together to help you make the dig decision. 

To tie this back to the original thread topic, the Equinox and Deus, for me, have the ideal combination of tone options and visual ID information, and I have not seen that optimal combo on really any other detector that I have used, and I have sampled many brands of detectors.  Maybe that's why I use those 2 detectors the most.

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12 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Say on the Nox the nickel is varying between 12 and 14.  This would equate to a variation of 51 to 63 on the Deus.

OK, I reread the full post and it makes sense.  I disagree on a few minor points (mostly about definitions, though) and those aren't worth bringing up since it doesn't really add to the meaning/value of the topic.  But the above (quote) has me confused.

In your post I recall that the full scale range of the Eqx was 50 values and for the Deus, 100 values.  Wouldn't that mean that 12-->14 on the Eqx (which in theory for a continuous scale is anything between 11.5 and 14.5 -- a 'distance' of 3) should be a distance of twice that = 6 on the Deus?  So if the Deus sweetspot for USA nickel is 57, the nickel should show up between 54 and 60 (inclusive)?

IMO, the two things that are important are repeatability and resolution.  Repeatability because you want a particular target to give the same value every time, regardless of variables (e.g. properties related to its exact location) and resolution to allow you to separate/distinguish different type targets.  As long as you do those two I don't feel that more is needed.  But, yes, things like stability can lead to poorer repeatability and worse resolution.

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I completely agree with you on hunting by audio. Majority of my hunting has been with my Tesoro and have far more hours on that machine over all my other machines combined.

The only time not having a normalized id scale is if the user is using a 2 tone, 3 tone or 4 tone and had customized their tone breaks for a particular frequency.

As an example if I had set my tone breaks on my MK so one tone crackles on a beaver tail and the  next breaks on a degraded zinoln then I change frequencies then those breaks no longer work. Idealy it would be nice if the manufacturer moved those custom breaks as the user changes frequencies.

If a machine is too hot for the conditions you will get jumpy tid's. That shouldn't be confused with poor precision of the machine or innacuracies of the machine itself but rather poor or uncalibrated settings from the user to the surrounding conditions.

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1 hour ago, kac said:

The only time not having a normalized id scale is if the user is using a 2 tone, 3 tone or 4 tone and had customized their tone breaks for a particular frequency.

That is an excellent point.  I am personally lazy and do not futz with customizing tone breaks which is another reason I normally go with 50 or Full tones or pitch. But that tone break customization ability makes a case for using 3 or 5 tones and I get that works well for many folks.  I will use 5 tones in a pinch, especially on the beach, but still never futz with the default tone breaks.

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On 10/16/2020 at 10:07 AM, GB_Amateur said:

In your post I recall that the full scale range of the Eqx was 50 values and for the Deus, 100 values.  Wouldn't that mean that 12-->14 on the Eqx (which in theory for a continuous scale is anything between 11.5 and 14.5 -- a 'distance' of 3) should be a distance of twice that = 6 on the Deus?  So if the Deus sweetspot for USA nickel is 57, the nickel should show up between 54 and 60 (inclusive)?

Chuck - You are right from a math standpoint but the scale is not exactly linear across the entire range, especially when you throw TID high conductor compression into the equation associated with jamming the high conductor TIDs into a fixed 100 point scale when the TIDs want to increase with operating frequency.  I found that using a ratio of 55/13 to "fudge" the TIDs in my example actually gave more realistic TID numbers (i.e., numbers that I have actually seen in the field for the targets I was talking about) than if I used straight linear match 55/23 (i.e., 13 +10 for the iron range).  I don't know why but I think it compensates for the non-linear nature of the scales, especially since I am comparing a normalized scale (Nox) vs. an un-normalized scale (Deus).  Anyway, I think it illustrated the points I was trying to make if not true to algebra.  But that just goes to show that TID just has so many variables that it is hard to compare different detector scales on an apples-to-apples basis.  So scale "linearity" also needs to be thrown in there as well as the other attributes (accuracy, precision, repeatability).

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