Beach Vs Land Programs: An Unmasking Conundrum

[CPT_GhostLight]

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.

[Chase Goldman]

5 minutes ago, ColonelDan said:

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!🤣

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.  

[ColonelDan]

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!  👍 😃

[ColonelDan]

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.

[ColonelDan]

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.

[ColonelDan]

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.  🤣    

[JCR]

3D masking is certainly a real world challenge.   I don't think there is any universal magic combination of settings. The best I have been able to do is learn what actually helps and have an idea of how handicapped I may be on a site.

Each detectors signal processing is the key, the real source of any magic. Understanding this better helps me do better.

Interesting thread.

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, ColonelDan said:

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

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?

[ColonelDan]

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. 

[PI-Man]

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