Gee I'm no expert on this SE, but I've ran the factory preset only. It seems like a no brainer to me, turn on push the noise cancel button and go. I never worry about what I might have missed, today I followed the foot prints around for a hour in the sand from another guy detecting. He missed 30 coins, 7 quarters, 4 dimes, some of these coins were 10-12 inches down. So if I'm plucking coins down that far in dry sand conditions, and last week I got a 1920-1921 mercury dimes at 10 inches in a lawn, through all the roots. So I'm sure that with 350+ coins and 4 good rings in under a month, I'm still pinching myself happy with the detector.