Ok, I am going to get to the bottom of this one. A couple people have noted on the internet that the ground tracking did not really seem to be doing much. I usually do not use tracking but the one time I turned it on it also seemed like not much was happening. I will give it go tomorrow and find out for sure what is going on and report back.
I can tell you what the intent would be. In extremely variable ground ground tracking could be preferable to constantly having to manually ground balance the detector every few feet. A PI is very forgiving so we are talking really variable ground. I really have not run into something like that myself except in cobble piles made up of all sorts of different rocks. Tracking smooths everything out but also takes the edge off nugget responses. The faster the tracking, the more the nugget responses attenuate and possibly even are lost in extreme cases being treated as ground noise.
The newer generation Minelabs also let you choose tracking speeds but nearly everyone runs in fixed (no tracking) for the reasons noted above. I am pretty doubtful many people would ever need to use tracking on the ATX but you have me curious now.
From manual page 17 at http://www.garrett.com/hobbysite/hbby-manuals/1534000_atx_manual_rev_a.pdf
Ground Track
When switched on, Ground Track provides slow, continuous tracking to ground mineralization. The ATX has four Ground Track settings: OFF, SLOW, MEDIUM, and FAST, with OFF being the factory default setting.
To change the Ground Track setting:
• Press and release the SHIFT button to access Secondary controls.
• Repeatedly press the GND TRACK button to step through the four settings (see illustration below). OFF is indicated by LED 1, SLOW is indicated by LED 5, MEDIUM by LED 9, and FAST by LED 13.
• Press and release SHIFT button again to exit Secondary adjustments.
• The green LED will blink during operation when Ground Track is on.
Note: Ground Track may reduce detection depth due to slowly tracking to a target, especially with repeated swings over the target. Therefore, Ground Track should only be used when changing ground mineralization requires frequent re-ground balancing.