I've owned some machines that lacked a meter yet were praised for having detailed audio to judge targets by. Drove me nuts digging tons of trash and I'd resort to turning up the discrimination dial to keep from doing that, which in turn cost me depth. Mainly because those machines lacked tone alerts, but even if they did have them there are many instances or certain situations where I feel a meter is a must have to me. I have to have tone alerts because I hunt by ear and use that to catch my attention where I hear a certain tone level I'm looking for (based on what I'm looking for), but when I want to investigate further I feel the meter is a must have for me in most situations. Besides, by how the VDI reacts on a target I can draw further conclusions about it.
For example, at fringe depth if the target is trying to climb with the Sovereign wiggle, then that tips me off that it might be something good. But if that whisper locks into a set VDI #, then I know it's reached it's peak and the depth isn't a factor, but rather it isn't going to climb higher and has settled on what VDI # it probably is.
But year, most people know that audio is the first and last decision on digging or not when old coin hunting. If I hear what I suspect is a sweet high tone from silver at depth or mixed into heavy trash then I don't care what the meter is saying because I'm digging. But one of the perks to the Sovereign is that the VDI is tied rather directly to the audio. What you hear you instantly see...Even much more instantly than the VDI on faster machines I've owned. And usually on the Sovereign if you can hear a high tone at depth the meter is going to show the same thing.
I've found this GT seems to ID almost as deep as it sees, and I couldn't say the same thing for other detectors I've owned in the past. Also, due to it's lack of heavy separation in processing between the audio and VDI, since the VDI is just a simple output voltage level based on target conductivity, it's unlike some other detectors which have heavy processing between the audio and VDI and so the audio can be saying one thing while the VDI lags behind and says another.
Just the same though, audio is king, and is one of the strongest points of the Sovereign due to it's long detailed rich audio with numerous tone alerts.
But, when it comes to certain kinds of hunting I do, such as for buttons, relics, or rings, that's when I feel the super high resolution of the 180 meter in the low to upper mid conductivity range comes into it's own. Now I can make a mental note of and avoid certain pesky tabs or other common trash that roam a site by the thousands, and instead feel I'm making better use of my time by digging any and all targets that have a different VDI #. While nickels are easy enough to hear the lower tone and distinct "boing" sound compared to tabs which read higher, when it comes to stuff say 1 digit off of a pesky tab # or something I can't hear the difference in stuff like that. Even some stuff only say roughly 5 to 7 digits off in the low or mid conductivity range. Maybe some people's ears are good enough to split hairs on targets like that by the tones, but mine isn't.
Yea, I can often hear the "roundness", smoothness, "quality" type of sound to some targets versus some trash in the same VDI range, but the meter helps me to split hairs in certain situations in what I'm hunting for, or more to the point what I'm trying to avoid. If a site has thousands of tabs I'm not going to make it my life's work to dig them all out of there, and if I'm after buttons, gold rings, odd coins that read lower on the scale, or other keepers in the low/mid range, that's when I simply won't do without a meter.
I too have owned machines that could tell coin types above a copper penny to some extent, and have dug plenty of silvers that read like clads or pennies, so for that reason I want less ID "float" and just for the machine to tell me it's a coin. A floaty VDI tries to talk me out of what I suspect might be a coin, so that's where I feel the bigger net catching more fish thing comes into play for me. It's easier to "grab and hold" onto a coin signal when the window for what the machine considers a coin is much wider in perspective (IE: copper penny all the way up to a silver dollar reads 180). Less chance of the target "sloshing over the sides" of the VDI range for that coin when it's got more room to be grabbed onto and held by the meter IMO.
Another perk to the meters on the Sovereign is that they are calibrated to the machine and the coil by adjusting the tuning POT on the meter. For that reason people don't have to worry about a coil change making some targets slightly read a bit "off".
One other thing about the VDI traits that I find handy. Usually screw caps for me will give a good coin hit from one angle, but will make sort of a "warble" from 90 degrees to them. This warble is fairly close to what coins on edge often sound like to me. They are different, but just the same I can get fooled sometimes on that if my memory hasn't been refreshed on them. So what I've found helpful about the VDI in that situation is when I hear that warble I'll note what the meter is saying. Often it'll go "178" or so and either stay there or it will bump back and fourth from there to 180. Where as a coin on edge for me often won't do this, but rather it'll make a slow steady climb to 180, then collapse like a house of cards, and then make that steady climb to 180 again.
This isn't even coins at depth. I've dug some in the 4 or 5" range that did this to me. But also that's one way I'll decide if a deep coin hit is a coin and not and iron false. If it makes the slow steady climb as I wiggle, which I can't tell via the audio with my hearing, then I suspect it's a coin. But if it jumps all over the place in a far more random pattern as it "climbs", then I tend to suspect it's iron. The other ways I tell iron are mainly via the audio, being if it is ghostly or washed out from certain angles, but the VDI can be useful in that respect too sometimes.
So yea, audio always has and always will be king, and the Sovereign has that in spades, and the audio should always be the first and last decision to dig, but I look at the VDI as another form of input as to hints of what I'm after.
And even when we fall into habits of thinking we know what iron should sound or look like, depending on how badly the coin is masked, on edge, deep, or is being washed out by severe minerals, those iron hits could turn out to be an actual coin. That's why when I'm hunting a dead site, instead of wandering for hours looking for deep classic silver hits that no longer exist there, I try to spend my time digging any iffy coin hits, even if experience has me believing they are going to turn out to be iron or other junk. They usually do turn out to be what I suspected- iron, but it happens often enough that I'm surprised with a nice silver or other coin to prove that it's not always the case.
Not even the audio is foolproof in instances like that. It's also the reason why we always seem to hear of a new guy making a great find at a long since "dead" spot, with an entry level machine. He simply hasn't fallen into any bad habits yet and took a chance on digging what everybody was sure was iron or some other junk, just because he doesn't think he knows any better yet about what type of coin signal is worthy to dig.
OEM 180 meter for the GT. I even had Joe Patrick put one of his meters in the faceplate of my GT which is a great mod, but have found I never look at it while hunting on the beach which is 99.9% of all my hunting. I have found that the right headphones help a lot more than any meter did for me .
