Run as little iron mask as you can stand to have. By that I mean you'll have a lot more responses but certainly not something that is unbelievable. Your good targets seem to hit harder to me when the machine isn't worrying about filtering out the bad signals. <br>
I recently went from -12 to -14 for my normal. (I use no patterns, making all dig decisions by what I see on the screen and hear in the audio... If a good sound is matched even occasionally by a good ID I dig... Plain old Advanced Iron Mask.. Good targets may hit on the bad side at first but if they're good you'll see enough hits on the good side to get you interested...) To me it seemed to hit the good ones a bit harder. Good targets next to junk definitely gave out some bad ID's to go along with the good ID but the sound still gives it away. Don't let the meter make all your decisions. Most targets these days are problem targets left over by other machines simply because they had problems seeing them. Get used to junk being next to them. That's what's left. If you only dig perfect signals you could walk for a long time in a park without digging... Pinpoint and recheck a lot. Get good at pinpointing, as many times, especially with junk next to a target it will the most trying thing you'll have to learn. It loves to de-tune itself. There's nothing like that light warble it makes on a deep target. Love that sound...
My take... Guvner..