Audio smoothing

I found I needed to put the audio smoothing up high to get a smooth threshold... in all the places I detected. Has anyone else noticed this? I was still picking up bits missed with my 5000, but believe the audio smoothing dumbs down the unit a bit.

without audio smoothing is a big advantage if you can put up with the unstable threshold. I tried it out today and after doing a restart and then the 10 second ground balance it was still a bit ratty but the little nuggets still boomed through. the stand out today was a .17 at 6 inches. it was flat with a face about the size of a match head and must have been laying flat to give a good signal. factory preset with audio smoothing off.

G'day Kevwr & tricky 1,

We were told you need to back everything off to get the best out of the smoothing settings to the lowest points. They say to start off on the low smoothing and get used to it then go to the smoothing off, as I said you need to back off your sensitivity and the threshold, as you will notice each time you drop down a level on the smoothing the threshold gets louder. There will always be areas where you may need to run in the low/high smoothing settings. Hope this helps you out some.

Cheers.

Mike.

Our ground is mild but can have patches of highly mineralisation. I have found that if I run no audio smoothing I can detect deeper. Sometimes it is hard to run in normal but quite good in difficult. If I run in difficult I raise my sensitivity up by at least 2. In difficult mode you don't dig as many hot rocks, burnt tree roots and clay domes. Using the audio smoothing in low dulls the detector hence the previous comment.

Factory presets puts audio smoothing in low by default. Go figure.

I know can't figure that out either. Maybe more user friendly.

I believe Smoothing equates to Stabilizer in the GPX, I could be wrong?
They have probably combined the stabilizer with the motion filters in the Zed.

Anyway the Stabilizer defaults to 10 mid range, which could be likened to low Smoothing.
Smoothing off could be likened to cranking up the Stabilizer a couple of notches above 10.

G'day alchemist,

We were told the smoothing on the GPZ is very similar to the stabiliser on the GPX. So you are correct in saying what you have said.

Cheers.

Mike.

I have tried over four days of detecting with the Z so far to play around with the 3 smoothing settings on targets.
Unfortunately I have not had any large deep gold, 1.8g @ 12" best so far,  sounded like a bullet near the surface so didn't think its was gold.
For me I have found having the smoothing on high with the sensitivity turned up as high as possible so that the threshold is still dead flat, usually around 14-16 depending on time of day and area of detecting, gave me the best response due to not having any flutter in the background to mask the faint signals.
The signal is slightly mellower than with smoothing off but having a flat threshold tone it stands out much better compared to smoothing off with the sensitivity having to be reduced and the warbling threshold.
This was very evident for the small 0.1-0.5g bits at silly depths at times as the faint yips seemed to blend in with the background warble with the smoothing off.
My concern is whether it will mask some of the deeper broad and subtle responses on larger targets at depth. I did dig 75cm down for a strip of metal and that target was quite obvious no matter what level of smoothing was applied, the difference was with the high yield vs deep timings there as one gave a broader less defined signal than the other.
So is it better to feed the machine with more information, setting the sensitivity high and let its processor smooth it out or feed it less information, lowering the sensitivity and use your own ears to act as the filter?
I run my GPX5000 with the gain and stabilizer around 16 or sometimes higher but run audio on quiet and motion very slow, again the response wasn't as sharp but then there is little to no background warble to mask it, I tried many tests on many undug targets and that was what I settled on for my general detecting.
Ill have to spend more time in the field and hopefully find a target that is deep and mellow so I can do more tests on it.

Thanks polka for your comprehensive report on the "audio smoothing" feature of the new detector, it is interesting to read the different variations that people like to use and are finding best for there style of detecting.

cheers dave

tricky 1 wrote:without audio smoothing is a big advantage if you can put up with the unstable threshold. I tried it out today and after doing a restart and then the 10 second ground balance it was still a bit ratty but the little nuggets still boomed through. the stand out today was a .17 at 6 inches. it was flat with a face about the size of a match head and must have been laying flat to give a good signal. factory preset with audio smoothing off.

0.17g is pretty good . I do not know the 5000 well enough to say how deep it might possibly go on that same nugg.

I know my Infinium will do approx 5cm absolute max on that size nugg in any type of ground with the 10 x 14 mono.
That does not sound like much to many SD and GPX operators but for the Infinium I am happy with that figure.

In the pic I have shown a 0.15g that would be similar to the 0.17 you have mentioned, plus also a 1.1g sluggy that the Finny will find at 6+ inches in moderate iron mineral. The pic shows this slugg sitting on a 2+kg lump of maghematite through which  the Inf will find easily at 4 inches throught this lump.

So if your 7000 can find a kitchy piece 0.17 at 6 inches in high iron minerals then to me at least that is not too slack.






Hmmmm. So image hosting is working now.

I have come to realise that it is better to turn off audio smoothing if possible. Last few trips I carefully worked a patch with audio smoothing on and retrieved nuggets I had missed with my 5000. Then last trip I decided to turn off audio smoothing and working the same patch I picked up another 5 pieces... very faint but clear signals that appear to have been "smoothed" out with the audio smoothing.