Hi, homerule. Welcome to the findmall and the forum!
Adam already gave you a pointer to the manual. Definitely print it out and study it.
I've had an XS2 for a little over a year now, although that's been extremely heavy usage--probably 20-30 hours a week during the warm season--so take that into account in the following advice. (For good or ill (there's a lot of folks on here with a lot more knowledge about and experience with the Sov than I have.)
At first, it might be easier to just leave the sensitivity knob in the auto position--counterclockwise all the way where it clicks--until you've gotten used to the Sov sounds. But, in the long run, for more depth in any given location, turn the sensitivity up (counterclockwise!) until it starts to chatter/get noisy and then back it off a hair. You will get falsing off the edges of iron that sounds like a good pitch and the higher the sensitivity the more it will do that. (Which is one reason I suggest leaving it in auto for a while.) Those signals aren't as repeatable as a good solid coin but it can get confusing when there's a coin near iron.
Discrimination cuts out everything below the point you have it set at. In a very trashy spot, I'll usually turn that up to just below buffalo nickels but almost all the time just leave it turned all the way down. If you didn't know, the XS2 will always null out iron (except for falsing) when in discrimination mode. But by doing that, it eliminates the possibility of some of the older unusual coins--the nickel three cent piece, for instance, will sound very close to foil--and deep coins.
Notch is a narrow-bandwidth filter that will eliminate responses to a particular conductivity target and a little bit on each side. I generally leave it off but, at times, will notch out a particularly prevalent pulltab in really trashy areas. But it's usually all the way off. If you're going to use it, the way to use it is to, say, take a pulltab that you've been digging a ton of and wave it over the coil while adjusting the notch knob until that signal disappears.
If you don't have a meter for it, I would suggest getting one as a newbie to the Sov unless you have perfect pitch. (I can't tell what pitch a sound is like some apparently can.) It makes it a lot easier to learn what's what. One thing you can do without a meter is put a jefferson nickel in the toe of one shoe and an zinc penny (post-1982) in the toe of the other shoe to test sounds against when you find a target you're curious about. Buffalo nickels will sound slightly lower than the Jefferson most of the time and, except for jewelry (and perhaps a few rare, old coins?), most of the range between the Jefferson nickel and the zinc penny will be pull tabs and other trash. You probably don't want zincs but a lot of Indian Heads fall in the same range. At the beginning, all dimes, copper pennies, quarters, etc. will sound pretty much the same tone, no matter whether they're silver or clad. (Some advanced folks--probably with particularly good hearing or pitch--can tell the difference between some of them but I usually can't so far.) Also, the narrow range between zincs/IHs and all the other hight pitch coins is where twist-on bottle caps will fall most of the time. You can usually tell those by the variability in the frequency response. (The pitch will chitter up and down a bit compared to a coin.) As you get better and start going for deeper coins, be aware that very deep coins will sound lower than they do on the surface. Overall, I'd suggest digging everything for a while until you learn to know the tones.
It's a great machine but it takes a while to get used to it. But time put into it will pay off!
What machine(s) are you coming from?
