Why Does Signal Clipping Occur? And How To Lessen

[drake]

Equinox 600- Recently in a heavy ferrous riverbed, all my signals were coming in clipped, no full long sounds. I Slowed the recovery speed to 2 (= 4 on the 800), and reduced signal strength.

Decided to dig some bad signals anyway, thinking it was junk, but actually some were good brass items. I nearly overlooked them all, because of the unclear signals.

Any advice ? I imagine the machine was trying to discriminate  out the surrounding iron, but it was difficult having the same problem with every signal being cut/clipped , even with every park and field setting ?

[Chase Goldman]

I suggest using the horseshoe button to cut out discrimination, this will prevent mixed ferrous/non-ferrous signal clipping due to mixed ferrous/non-ferrous or corroded targets partially popping above the discrimination breakpoint as the coil passes the edge of the target (typical of nail heads).  The drawback is that you will hear the iron but then you can at least correlate the iron tones to the unclipped non-ferrous tones to see if what you are hearing is a corroded target or a target partially masked by iron.  If you do go that route, be sure to increase recovery speed again if you are overcome by ground noise (-9 and -8 tid signals).  Lowering sensitivity is a good move in this situation to keep the ferrous targets from overloading the detector.   There are no easy fixes to this difficult detecting situation.

I like to use Field 2 in this situation and interrogating the target in prospect mode helps, unfortunately that's not an option with the 600.

 

Good luck. HTH HH

[drake]

Thanks for the technical explanation Chase, That helps me understand what’s going on with my detector more. I was at a different river today, and i did just that, -left the ferrous tones on to hear the whole signal. Although here wasn’t high ferrous like the place the other day.

Ill save this info for future reference.

Yes, it must have been tough ground for it, because I haven’t had any troubles as bad as that before. It was very old farming area and near a convict bridge, so I think lots of pieces of old iron throughout the sand. But armed with a bit more knowledge, I might try again. 

thanks.

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

Drake,

Signal clipping can be caused by detector settings, namely speed setting, iron bias setting, detect mode used, etc.

Sweep speed and or coil position over a target scenario can cause too.

Ground mineralization can cause too, and better settings for situation at hand could lessen clipping.

The actual detecting scenario over particular target can cause, and a clipped signal may be as good a signal one ever gets.  This could be deemed a challenged target for detector.  Some of these kinds of targets, if swept with other models detectors a user may not even get a signal period.

Target orientation and or shape can cause too.  A target’s size can cause too.  A targets conductivity level can cause too.

So yes there can be fainter signals, and clipped signals, as well as fainter and clipped signals.

[Mark Gillespie]

The sensitivity being to high will cause any detector to false over bits of iron.  I would suggest, as already mentioned, open up the discrimination and work around some of these iron signals.  By that I mean rotate a little around some of these clipped audio reports and see if the clipped audio starts to clear up, if so there might be a good target mixed in with the iron trash.  Any kind of metal mixed in with good targets will cause false audio reports from any detector.  Iron can both increase and decrease both the ID numbers and the audio signals from any good target.

Good example below.  

 

[NCtoad]

I've had signals that were clipped while using no disc (all metal, horseshoe button engaged) and while doing a 360 degree swing on the target, I'll hit an angle where the signal will be a solid high tone.  This in park 1 or park 2 with iron bias at zero on both.  At almost all other angles of the my 360 degree swing, I'll hear iron and see negative numbers.  I'll just get that one sweet spot where it'll high tone (5 tones).  I think every time this has happened it's been a rusty old nail.  Now if I do a 360 degree swing and get mostly high tones  with just a few iron grunts, it's usually a coin with iron in the hole.  

[Cabin Fever]

Use 50 Tones with No discrimination. This should eliminate your audio clipping. (Not falsing) You can set your ferrous range audio volume on low. 

Bryan