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In certain situations such as beach hunting, or prospecting for
gold nuggets, one should “dig it all.” The reason for this is the
wide range of target sounds that different types of gold nuggets
and jewelry can produce. However, in many cases the biggest
hurdle a treasure hunter faces is human trash - bottle caps, iron,
bobby pins, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Your ears are the best discriminator available, and after using
the TDI for some time they will begin to learn to listen for the
subtleties in audio responses. In particular, pay attention to the
tail end of signals. You will find that good targets produce a nice
clean sweep of a signal, whereas junk tends to produce a broken
or warbly sound with more variation at the end of the tone. But
remember that every signal you left undug could be a good one.
This is why when first starting out, digging every signal can
really help you learn your machine. Each target dug will have a
sound to remember, and after some time digging junk you will
learn what each target’s audio fingerprint is, alowing your ears to
discriminate more effectively.
Threshold also has an effect on how much noise gets through
to the audio. A moderate threshold lets some of the noise through
(anything in the gray region is suppressed):
In this case you will hear a moderate amount of chatter, de-
pend-ing on the
Gain
setting. Weak target signals may come
through but may be indistinguishable from noise.
