Reverse Hunting, Pinpoint Hunting At The Beach

[Chase Goldman]

48 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

I'll admit I don't see why you can't use the Gold modes in the salt water if they multi frequency like the beach mode, as you say you may have to tame it a bit to somewhat emulate the Beach modes.

Because it's more than just multifrequency, its how the multifrequency is weighted and the signal is processed.  That's the multiIQ part and is what gives each mode it's unique personality and capabilities.  In the case of beach mode, Multi IQ is tuned to run less hot (basically the opposite of gold mode) and to balance salt ground conductivity which just happens to fall in the Gold range.  Since that is where the Gold modes are tuned, they (and in fact most of the other non-beach modes) run terribly noisy and are unusable in wet salt sand and surf.  Ironically, this means the beach modes are generally less sensitive to gold than the "2" and Gold modes, but balance the tradeoff sufficiently to lower ground noise due to salt conductivity enough that you can still snag some decent gold  or platinum targets, especially if they are chunky.  Because Gold mode is tuned hot for gold and by default for salt, no amount of taming (lowering of sensitivity) would enable you to use it in effectively in wet salt sand because you would have to reduce sense too far for practical purposes.  You need to tweak the Multi IQ which is not possible for the end user and even then you are essentially turning it into Beach mode.  HTH

I think the VCO modulated pitch-like audio of the Gold Mode and true threshold are great features that are actually on my wish list for a future Equinox capability upgrade as settings options for the non-gold modes.  The unique gold mode audio which is similar sounding (but still different than) pinpoint mode, rather than gold mode itself, may be what you are finding attractive about gold mode for your freshwater hunting purposes.  Regardless, the fact that you can run gold mode in freshwater is good news for you.

[Alluminati]

7 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Because it's more than just multifrequency, its how the multifrequency is weighted and the signal is processed.  That's the multiIQ part and is what gives each mode it's unique personality and capabilities.  In the case of beach mode, Multi IQ is tuned to run less hot (basically the opposite of gold mode) and to balance salt ground conductivity which just happens to fall in the Gold range.  Since that is where the Gold modes are tuned, they (and in fact most of the other non-beach modes) run terribly noisy and are unusable in wet salt sand and surf.  Ironically, this means the beach modes are generally less sensitive to gold than the "2" and Gold modes, but balance the tradeoff sufficiently to lower ground noise due to salt conductivity enough that you can still snag some decent gold  or platinum targets, especially if they are chunky.  

I think the VCO modulated pitch-like audio of the Gold Mode and true threshold are great features that are actually on my wish list for a future Equinox capability upgrade as settings options for the non-gold modes.  The unique gold mode audio which is similar sounding (but still different than) pinpoint mode, rather than gold mode itself, may be what you are finding attractive about gold mode for your freshwater hunting purposes.  Regardless, the fact that you can run gold mode in freshwater is good news for you.

Ya being a freshwater hunter I think I'm in good shape.

What I (and others) found attractive about (All-Metal / Pinpoint) audio of the Excalibur is the added depth and real time feel it gives when you remove the filter that bins the signal into tones. It is used to locate extra, deep targets in the sanded summer months. Whatever the coil size, you expand the range the machine can locate. Minelab is the best at signal processing, however my quick test this morning easily showed the added depth and real time feel the Gold modes all-metal audio gave when you remove the 1/5/50 tone processor.

The easiest thing would be for Minelab to add the all-metal audio as an option to all the modes, as well as the ability to toggle the Multi-IQ weighting from high to low.

[Chase Goldman]

21 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

Ya being a freshwater hunter I think I'm in good shape.

What I (and others) found attractive about (All-Metal / Pinpoint) audio of the Excalibur is the added depth and real time feel it gives when you remove the filter that bins the signal into tones. It is used to locate extra, deep targets in the sanded summer months. Whatever the coil size, you expand the range the machine can locate. Minelab is the best at signal processing, however my quick test this morning easily showed the added depth and real time feel the Gold modes all-metal audio gave when you remove the 1/5/50 tone processor.

The easiest thing would be for Minelab to add the all-metal audio as an option to all the modes, as well as the ability to toggle the Multi-IQ weighting from high to low.

Agree, I generally hate to run filters of any kind so I typically run all metal, 50 tones, and no iron bias because filters just mask important information AFAIC, as long as you can stand all that audio input and process it yourself.  Just to clarify, the audio in gold mode is not "all metal" audio per se in the sense that Gold Modes can still run with discrimination.  It is that the audio as VCO pitch only gives you depth and target size clues and requires you to look at the display for target ID.  In other words, it sounds practically the same for two targets of identical depth and shape regardless of their metallic composition except that a mid-conductor like gold may sound off slightly louder than a high conductor at depth due to the Multi IQ weighting.

Like I  said, I too agree that ML should add the VCO pitch audio option down the road as a "tone" setting for the other modes.  That is how XP does it for the Deus.  You can select multi tones, full tones (analogous to 50 tones), or pitch for any discrimination-based mode on the Deus and has a separate Gold Field mode with VCO audio but iron rejection vs. discrimination.

I think shifting Multi IQ processing on the fly in any mode is interesting, but that is basically redundant to the mode selection scheme if ML provides the VCO tone option for all modes as we discussed.  Right now I am content to toggle between disparate modes using the User Profile button on the 800.

[Alluminati]

If you run 50 tone, you're running an audio filter. That is the specific filter we want to turn off. Small an deep targets aren't strong enough to generate a response, think targets beyond "iffy."

You can run a true all-metal audio while running a parallel process to generate a TID number or to mute the audio over a rejected target. That is most likely why the Equinox has the all-metal audio in the Gold mode. To hear small and faint targets that the 1/5/50 tone filter would ignore as apart of the noise floor.

 

[Chase Goldman]

12 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

If you run 50 tone, you're running an audio filter. That is the specific filter we want to turn off. Small an deep targets aren't strong enough to generate a response, think targets beyond "iffy."

You can run a true all-metal audio while running a parallel process to generate a TID number or to mute the audio over a rejected target. That is most likely why the Equinox has the all-metal audio in the Gold mode. To hear small and faint targets that the 1/5/50 tone filter would ignore as apart of the noise floor.

 

I have no choice at the moment in the other modes so I do the best I can with what I have.  Besides, I draw the line at that point, because tone audio gives you so much more information about the target than a single number VID alone and I certainly would not want to hunt solely with pitch audio alone and no VDI or even PITCH 100% of the time  unless I wanted to dig it all 100% of the time which is impractical.  Besides, the much faster processing of the Equinox makes it generally a non issue 90% of the time.  It's those 10% masking situations where I wish I had VCO pitch audio.  As I think more about this I wish they had implemented true threshold with the other modes as they did with Gold mode.  Right now, the threshold on the non-gold modes just blanks when you run the coil across a discriminated target.  I could probably live with that and forego VCO pitch mode.  But it would be good to go with both on all modes because Gold Mode doesn't necessarily cut the mustard if going for deep silver.  

[Alluminati]

Remember its just used for locating extra targets off shore. When you find a target, take some sand off the top and check it with discrimination, dig it up or move on. Totally worth it.

About 1/3rd of my gold is discovered this way. It is useful in the summer months when the sand is deep.

Ultimately 100% of the targets are discriminated.

The Equinox is fast, but all digital devices are made from 100% analog parts and analog parts suffer from losses of signal during processing. 

[Chase Goldman]

41 minutes ago, Alluminati said:

The Equinox is fast, but all digital devices are made from 100% analog parts and analog parts suffer from losses of signal during processing. 

Ok, I work in engineering, but you lost me on that one.  Electrical parts are electrical parts, at their very basic level they are neither analog nor digital .  Signals are either digitized or analog and are processed by either digitally based software/firmware algorithms (using an microprocessor comprised of thousands of electrical component parts to process digital signals) or analog based circuits or a hybrid combination of both..  It is true that when converting an analog signal to digital some information loss occurs (usually negligible) and the sensor is capturing analog information to begin with and is subject to signal loss, not due to digital signal processing but due to the natural energy losses which show up as heat and noise introduced by the analog circuits.  That is why engineers try to get the received signal into digital form as early in the process as possible, because they are not subject to the analog losses.  Switching to gold mode doesn't really change anything having to do with losses that occur when the received target signal at the coil is converted to digital information and doesn't essentially change the most intensive signal processing that is going on with Multi IQ which occurs (albeit with different digital algorithms) in every mode.  Gold mode just changes the nature of the digital audio output (pitch vs. tones) and is actually processed just as much as the tone audio in the other modes, it is just processed to provide a different output to the user.  That is why I think it would be relatively simple to implement Gold Mode audio in the other modes just as it would be possible (but not desirable) to use tones with Gold Mode since the point of gold mode is to find gold not silver, so tone ID is not as important. They are just two different, but effective ways to provide audio feedback to the operator for two different detecting objectives.  One is not less processed or has less signal losses than the other at that point.

[Alluminati]

44 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Ok, I work in engineering, but you lost me on that one.  Electrical parts are electrical parts, at their very basic level they are neither analog nor digital .  Signals are either digitized or analog and are processed by either digitally based software/firmware algorithms (using an microprocessor comprised of thousands of electrical component parts to process digital signals) or analog based circuits or a hybrid combination of both..  It is true that when converting an analog signal to digital some information loss occurs (usually negligible) and the sensor is capturing analog information to begin with and is subject to signal loss, not due to digital signal processing but due to the natural energy losses which show up as heat and noise introduced by the analog circuits.  That is why engineers try to get the received signal into digital form as early in the process as possible, because they are not subject to the analog losses.  Switching to gold mode doesn't really change anything having to do with losses that occur when the received target signal at the coil is converted to digital information and doesn't essentially change the most intensive signal processing that is going on with Multi IQ which occurs (albeit with different digital algorithms) in every mode.  Gold mode just changes the nature of the digital audio output (pitch vs. tones) and is actually processed just as much as the tone audio in the other modes, it is just processed to provide a different output to the user.  That is why I think it would be relatively simple to implement Gold Mode audio in the other modes just as it would be possible (but not desirable) to use tones with Gold Mode since the point of gold mode is to find gold not silver, so tone ID is not as important. They are just two different, but effective ways to provide audio feedback to the operator for two different detecting objectives.  One is not less processed or has less signal losses than the other at that point.

 It will be easier for my to say that you misunderstand.

If you want to say a lone resistor in a box is neither analog or digital, until you hook it up to something fine, but in the practical world "digital" is not much more then an information protocol that uses two discrete points instead of a proportional relationship. The whole shebang is still analog at the component level.

The all-metal pinpoint mode on the Excalibur removes the filter that bins and generates tones, it doesn't "change it to pitch". Based off the quick test this morning and based off of what we have learned in the past, the Gold mode also removes the filter, the pitch isn't added or generated, its the almost raw audio of the induction balance being disturbed in the coil. Once you pass over the target the two haves of the coil balance out and go silent again. 

It would be simple to implement Gold audio into the other modes, but they will not add tones to the Gold mode barring a significant breakthrough in tech. They are not the same or just as effective. The point of the audio in Gold mode is to detect smaller signals. (Small nuggets) If your nuggets are the 1 gram and bigger then just run in Park 2.

 

[Chase Goldman]

Ok thanks.  I have issues with  some of what you wrote regarding ML's ability to implement tones in Gold mode but it is probably best to just agree to disagree. We are probably both talking past each other to a certain extent resulting in "misunderstandings".   Good discussion nevertheless.

[dewcon4414]

The other modes dont have a salt setting..... its not just about multi freq.  In fact even beach 2 mode is working at reduced power besides the salt setting to calm the chatter.