ColonelDan

No, fresh water does not need the beach programs. I use General in fresh water lakes and it does just fine.

That’s it and it makes sense otherwise the salty environment and related mineralization drives detectors nuts.

The test doesn't require you to be on sand. Mine resulted in masking in my test garden backyard. sandy soil/loom. Clad Quarter buried at 6 inches, ferrous tent stake pushed vertically in the ground and buried with the horizontal top of the stake at 1 inch deep and only 2 inches to the side of where the quarter was buried. Just FYI...I also conducted this same test with my second D2 just to rule out malfunction with the first D2. Same results. I await your report

I’ve made arrangements to have this thread sent to the right people at XP so hopefully we’ll see what they have to say or what they can do.

👍🏻

CPT, Gave every level of AR a shot and adjusted other settings in conjunction with the AR variation…. No change in the masking. I’m sure this is an XP engineering issue and only they will be able to address it. Now the larger question is, when and if they can fix the masking issue, will the fix break something else….this is always, or at least frequently the risk you incur with software manipulation.

Super day! Good job

Good observation CPT. I'll try adjusting the AR as you suggest. One point, you were using land based programs in this run and I too was able to unmask targets using land based programs... it's the beach programs that have the masking issue. I'll post the results of AR adjustments soon. Thank you

If the ground balance is significantly out of balance it can cause you to miss good targets but that’s not the case here. The sandy soil here is mild and the ground balance was right on the money.

Thank you but I hope nobody interprets my search for a solution as degrading the Deus 2. Having been around metal detectors since 1970, I will say without hesitation that the Deus 2 is the very best unit I have ever used or tested. I would not own any other at this point but I would very much like to see this masking issue in the beach modes resolved. If the XP engineers can solve this, it would make the best detector on the market today even better! 👍🏻😁

No, I get nothing regardless of notch/no notch or disc.

One thing about all this becomes perfectly clear...once again. Testing targets and settings on top of the ground can and most times will give you a different result than the same target array that's buried in the ground....which is where we hunt anyway...right? So I look at top-of-the-ground testing as a "preliminary maybe" indicator. I learned that years ago when I first started testing detectors and this masking venture just reinforced that lesson in spades....again. 🤣

CPT, Yep that was a typo. The audio response value on my spreadsheet and in my D2 is indeed 7. I totally agree, there's more to this magic than the settings available to us.

Understand and I agree. But when I tried the iron volume settings, it was dead silence as I swung over the masked target.

As Chase indicated, I've tried various MaxFs along with iron volume settings, reactivity settings and disc settings...still no unmasking in the Beach sensitive program which is my go to program. Same for Beach and Dive. I'd be pleasantly surprised if I missed one of the key combinations and permutations of the many available to us in the D2 and the unmasking issue just went away! Maybe Chase can find that right combination this weekend! 👍 😃

I've tried the iron volume at 0 and various levels of Discrimination too...no success. Good luck at the beach. I sincerely hope you find the magic solution!🤣

Neither Discrimination nor Notch made any difference with the masking issue. Since no matter what we do anyway the masking will still be there, we just prefer silent search and not hearing the occasional iron. If we can somehow overcome the masking one of these days, that would certainly be much preferred. However, like you and I discussed, it seems this is a question better suited for an XP engineer to tackle. 😉

We too have limited ferrous on our tourist beaches aside from ferrous bottle caps, which the bottle cap filter helps us avoid and tent stakes. If we can't get this masking issued resolved, my hunting buddy and I will just play the odds and go with our custom Beach Sensitive program and hope for the best. Notching out 0-10 does avoid many of the tent stakes and other occasional ferrous items that are few in number anyway.

I've been experimenting with V1.1 and developing a few custom programs to use on the beach and for relic hunting at our Seminole Indian War site. In the process I came across an unmasking situation I can't explain...and neither can some other well experienced detectorists that I've contacted. Using a clad quarter for the non-ferrous target and a small tent stake we always find on the beach for the ferrous target, I placed them on top of the ground side by side about 2 inches apart. Both the Beach Sensitive and General programs were able to unmask the quarter...but that was just an air test. The more authentic test would prove differently. When the same targets were buried side by side in mild sandy soil, the coin at 6 inches and the tent stake at 1 inch, as we would normally find in the real world, Beach Sensitive could not unmask the coin no matter the settings I used while the General program was able to unmask the coin when discrimination was set at 4.6. In Beach Sensitive, I tried numerous combinations of sensitivity, salt sensitivity, bottle caps, reactivity, discrimination, silencer, notch/no notch and audio filter in the 3 beach programs...again, with no success. The quarter was always masked by the tent stake. When the tent stake was removed, the quarter came through loud and clear with the expected TID of 95-96. Base Settings: General: Discrim: 4.6, Tone: Pitch, Bottle Caps: 0, Notch: Off, Sensitivity: 95, Max Freq: 40, Iron Vol: 7, Reactivity: 0, Audio Resp: 9, Threshold: 0, Audio Filter: 0, Tracking: on, Ground Stab: 2, Mag Ground: Reject, FE TID: Off Beach Sensitive: All settings listed above, plus salt sensitivity, were varied to determine if anything made a difference. No Difference. The quarter remained masked. Non-engineer assumption by me and others: This must be due to some software design that differentiates Beach programs from Land programs. A difference that the user cannot alter or adjust. Any ideas we may be missing would be welcomed. Perhaps and hopefully an XP engineer will see this and help us out. I'm obviously built too low to the ground since this conundrum goes right over my head. 🤣

Good report Captain! You have much more gumption that I have. I prefer beach sand over mud. 🤣

The clocks on both of my D2s are right on but I never use them anyway. My Apple watch is always with me.

What a week you’ve had my friend. Great job! 👍🏻

You've been a busy boy!!!😁

I'm beginning to think that particular video I saw might have been taken down. I've searched and searched without success. I also saw Gary on a recent video state that he was going to make a video focused on Audio Filter so I'm thinking when he does make that one, it will be more extensive than the one I originally saw....but that's just a guess on my part.

Those are the same settings I use on our beaches...AF5, BC3 and Hi Square. Seems to work well. I still dig a few just to confirm my thinking and so far, it's worked out...so far. I say "so far" because I've worked beaches for so long that depending on the type and condition of the bottle cap, they can still fool you.