ColonelDan

9 hours ago, midalake said:

Ugh, I have not had good depth testing responses with reactivity 1.5 and beyond. 

Myself, I hunt in 1 reactivity. 

Same here.  I try to stay at 0 and 1 at the most.

36 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Hmm. Interesting.  So there potentially is merit to zero iron volume as I suggested earlier in this thread.  But to be fair, I was suggesting it as an alternative to notch. Great info CPT.

I will test this approach tomorrow.  I’m particularly interested in trying a negative discrimination setting along with the lower iron volume because when I tried low iron volume without negative discrimination, the masking remained.  
If we find a solution, we will certainly capture those settings, post them in total and send a report to XP.

4 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Okay Colonel, I got a chance to slip out and test the masking scenario today. Let me preface as saying my soil is mineralized and sandy in my back yard and has dried out some since it hasn't rained since early yesterday and was sunny today. It's about 6 bars on the Ground Level Mineralization Strength meter. My ground balance varied from 87-89, but with Ground Tracking on, it settled in the 87 zone.

This is not exactly scientific testing but I approached it with a mind set to see if I could make the D2 unmask the clad quarter in your program. I was able to get it to unmask with the various land programs, but not with all of them. Granted I didn't spend too much effort adjusting the land programs, just basic hunting tweaks I would normally make to see which programs could hit the quarter. 

I set up for the test with your listed settings:

Base Program = Beach Sensitive, Max Freq = 40, Disc = 0.0, Notch = Off, Sensitivity = 95, Silencer = 0, B.Caps = 0, Reactivity = 0, Audio Response = 7, Iron Volume = 7, Tone = Pitch, Threshold = 0, Audio = High Sqr, Audio Filter = 0, FE TID = On (I forgot to turn that off from the factory default setting), Ground Tracking = On, Ground Stability = 2, Salt Sens = 7, Magnetic Ground = Reject.

This was the orientation of the quarter and tent peg in the ground with the quarter and tent peg in an East-West relationship:

 

I tried all the various settings and combinations as you did to unmask the quarter with no success. Pitch tones was giving me a high false tone on the tent peg but low VDI number, probably because I forgot to turn FE TID off. I raised the Disc up to 10 with no change, I began lowering it back down to zero with not much change in audio or TID, but when I lowered the DIsc below zero, the audio on the spike began to change and break up a bit and there was an occasional higher number (56- 85) flashing sporatically and the non-ferrous bar showed response as well.

This would only show up on the Southern  and sometimes the Northern end of a 360 swing rotation. It was also more pronounced if I did a rapid wiggle off of or onto the location of the quarter. When centered on the quarter, the tent spike would dominate the tonal response and TID.

Here is an unexpected result. I was going to raise and lower the Reactivity to see how that might affect the signals when I acidentally lowered the Iron Volume instead and, for some unknown reason, the lower the Iron Volume went the higher non-ferrous numbers appeared  on the TID while doing a 360 sweep. With Iron Volume from 3-0, I was able to tell there was a good enough non-ferrous target there to dig near the tent peg. When I set the Reactivity from 1.5-2.5, it improved the response even more with the lower Iron Volume settings. I don't know how that happened, but I would have dug those signals knowing there was something near the peg. You might give that a try to see if it makes any difference on your turf and beaches, but it worked for me.

 

 

Excellent report CPT.  Very thorough and promising.  I wonder what impact those settings might have on targets that aren’t next to ferrous items.  In any case, I’ll give them a shot here and see what happens.

Thanks again.  👍🏻

What a great “fun hunt!”  Good job. 😀

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

42 minutes ago, TJ Jeepguy said:

I wonder if the beach and diving programs need the salt/mineral component to process things correctly.  

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

36 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

I have Sunday off (Father's Day 😎) and I have loaded your settings on my D2. I don't have a saltwater beach, but I do have a sandy lake beach nearby, so I'll try to see if I can replicate what you are experiencing. And maybe some of the other salt water hunters on here could do the same and post their results, because more users showing the same results may grease the wheels at XP, so to speak. 😎

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. 

👍🏻

15 hours ago, ColonelDan said:

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

1 hour ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

I may be way off here, Col, but one thing jumps out at me and that's the Audio Response setting. I get that beaches are noisy with people, wind, waves, and such so I would imagine you need to crank it up to hear the tones.

However, the new V1.0 & V1.1 Audio Response was one of the settings that was beefed up by XP in the updates. I used to run AR at 5 in V0.71, but I had to dial it back to 4 with the new updates because it overloaded quite a bit on higher settings in my mineralized ground. I tried to run it on 5 a couple of days ago in an open field, but it really clipped the audio on shallower targets. I went back to 4 and deeper and shallower targets both sounded and separated better.

I think it was Paystreak who has made a few mentions in recent videos that the Audio Response is basically an amplifier circuit and he demonstrated on live digs that when the setting is increased it amplifies everything in the ground more, making larger and shallower targets sounds amplified to the point that they can mask good targets.

I know that doesn't address the TID masking issue, but I did some live dig tests today on a site with a lot of nails and big iron from demolished houses running my Fast Full Tones and Fast Pitch programs side by side. On more than a few instances I was able to pick out high coin tones colocated with iron with only spotty or no high TID numbers. That worked in Full Tones, but not when I switched over to Pitch Tones to check. I didn't try any of the 2 to 5 Tones settings, though.

Just some thoughts.

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

2 hours ago, Lodge Scent said:

Colonel I am certainly am not qualified to weigh in on this issue as I don't beach hunt (though I am only 30 minutes from the ocean!), but I will ask a question because I like learning. Could there be enough of a difference in the ground balance approach between the beach and land program platforms as to where it could contribute to iron masking in a salty environment?

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.  

9 hours ago, PI-Man said:

Col — interesting.  This is a lot of food for thought with what you are finding out about the D2 and it is appreciated.

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!  👍🏻😁

4 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Ok.  With disc and no iron volume, silence but with notch you got something?  That’s an interesting nuance, I missed.  Like a partial unmasking?

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.  🤣    

27 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Very interesting thread, Col. I know it's a typo, but you have your Audio Response listed as set at 9 (it only goes to 7) so I was curious what you have that set at. I'm also curious if you tried the Relic program in that scenario, as it's a Frequency Subtractive program as well.

I too have surmised that there's more to the secret sauce of each program than Max Feq settings. Personally I like to leave iron audible and FE TID on to get a better idea about ferrous/non-ferrous interaction. If I suspect iron is hiding something, I'll dig it out to see.

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.

17 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Dan - to be clear I wasn’t suggesting zero iron volume to “fix” the masking issue just in response to your comment regarding your preference for silent search wrt to iron being your motivation to go with Notch vice Disc.  Like I said, it’s really six one way, half a dozen the other.  Not sure it makes any practical difference with respect to your keeper count so just go with what works for you.  

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

54 minutes ago, JCR said:

I will suggest that the unmasking difference between the two programs has to do with how the SMF is weighted & processed. Even if you have the same max kHz setting,  the Sensitive program will favor the higher end of the spectrum as opposed to the General program.  Higher frequencies do not normally hit coins as hard but do hit ferrous harder than lower frequencies.  The 2D air test is not hard. The 3D in ground with 5" between  the 2 targets is hard for most any detector, even in mild soil.

I have experimented a good bit on at depth 3D masking. If ferrous trash, multi frequency is the way to go for sure. The lower weighted mix the better. There is also a sweet spot on reactivity/recovery and careful coil control is needed in interrogating a suspect target. I also find that being able to hear the iron and the higher conductor interact under the coil is helpful. TID will jumpy but not too wild.   Al trash and high mineralization is a whole other ballgame.

You may want to try using the lowest Max Freq possible on the Beach Sensitive(and General) and play with the Reactivity some more.

Let us know your results as this applies to all detectors and types of sites.

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!  👍 😃

53 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Gotcha.  If you want to go silent, you can also use disc but with iron volume set to zero.  Don’t think it matters much either way, though and notch doesn’t require the extra iron volume adjustment step.  Sometimes disc helps with ferrous down averaging which can help with unmasking, but as you observed, it doesn’t seem to matter or help with Beach sens.  I will have to experiment with notch vs. disc at the beach.

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!🤣

15 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

So are you now using notch vice disc on your Beach Sensitive program?  Was the masking issue was less evident with notch vice disk?

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.  😉

8 minutes ago, midalake said:

My beaches have little stacked or cluttered target issues. Over the years I have no need to test for masked targets. 

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.