Does A High Gain Metal Detector Go Deeper?

Does A High Gain Metal Detector Go Deeper?

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, so let's take into account that what I'm about to write is my opinion and there's a very high chance that many won't agree with me. Most of the tech machines on the market are what I call high gain - What Do I Mean By This? simple, they're filtered to hell to calm the 'difficult part' of operating a metal detector down which in turn allows you to pump the sensitivity up. What Does This Say To Me? the deeper targets are made to sound louder, I personally don't believe it makes the detector go deeper.

The prime example of this is the Nokta Legend, you have an audio gain setting, when you raise this above 3 it starts to make the deeper targets louder. The modulation in the signal response starts to fall away so pretty much everything you swing over sounds the same, so audio wise, deeper targets have a very similar response to shallower targets, and visa-versa. Meshed in with the high gain is a number of audio options, there are certain tones that are more pleasing to the ear, for instance the tones used on the Equinox 800 when running it in gold mode appear to cut through a lot more than the tones in all the other preset programs. 

Too Much Gain Can Distort The Messages

What Does This Mean?  if you have a punchy audio, for example, pitch tones on the Nokta Legend, this can make you think that the machine is detecting deeper targets because they sound clearer. When, in fact the audio is creating the illusion that the machine is punching deeper. Let me again use the Gold mode on the Equinox 800 as my example, I used this mode loads and I compared it to park, field and beach, there wasn't one time in two years of use where I can honestly say that the gold mode punched deeper than any of the other modes. Very simply put, the main tone in gold mode jumps out more than the others so it appears clearer and more noticeable to our ears. 

Now we can turn around and say, Gold mode is more sensitive to particular conductivities BUT  everything I hit on when using gold mode, I'd scroll through the other programs and the target response would be exactly the same. Now I know that there's some guys out there that worship at the alter of the latest tech, fair play but when I used my Equinox 800 in the fields I didn't hit on one coin over pin-pointer depth. Now when I took my Nexus machines into these same fields I started to dig a mix of targets that were different sizes and conductivities, anything from pin-pointer depth down to 14' and 16' inches. 

Was This Just My Imagination? No it wasn't' it was a very simple demonstrations that the digital tech machines with all their filters and settings are limited in the depth they can achieve. Once again, the more filters you have on a machine the more depth and discrimination at depth will be effected. Moving this example over to drumming, in regards to dynamics, there's a difference between playing loud and playing powerfully. It might sound strange but these are two separate things, sometimes the more power you put into something the more it can distort what you're able to hear. So moving back to metal detecting, the more power you pump into the ground can actually end up masking those signals on the edge of detection. I guess what I'm trying to say is less can in fact be a lot more in certain situations.