Rick(ND) said:
Silent search is not for me in most cases, but in some cases I can see its benefits. I like to hear the nulling of iron as I can tell if i am swing the coil too fast or hear a good target close to iron. If you are swinging the coil to fast you can and will miss the deep targets as you will not hear the tones changing thus missing some of the better targets. With a threshold you always hear what the Sovereign is seeing as a null is a disc out target and with the threshold you can hear every target it see and the slight change in it to alert you of a different target. Swing the coil to fast for the condition you will lose depth as the threshold is always in a null so with silent search you don't know if you have a null to slow down or not while with a threshold you know it seen iron so you can slow down and hear the target close to the iron or the deep target that only a tone change.
Now where i find it may come in handy is where targets are far a few to change the threshold so in most cases the last target was iron which the threshold come back as a low growl which a person gets tired to listen to. Now this is great as you can go silent search and not hear that low tone growl until you start getting more signals from alum, copper brass or silver then switch back to the threshold so you can hear the deep target. Yes silent search does lose depth and you can check this out yourself by getting one of those signals that the threshold just changes a little then switch to silent search and chance are you will not hear a signal. If you do try swinging the coil a little faster, then switch back to threshold and you will hear it better in the threshold mode. At least it does for me and like I say I will use the silent search trying to find a area with activity then switch to the threshold for my searching of the area. Also if you are clad hunting the silent search would work good too.
Well said...that Silent Search does have it's place when you are scouting large areas such as woods for activity and target signals might be absent for some time. Many times I'll hunt for a long period of time in the woods without hearing a peep. The non-changing threshold can get tiresome to constantly hear in those situations. It also will save you a little battery life since the speaker isn't sucking power constantly to produce the threshold. Having said that, I have yet to search in Silent Search very much at all. I keep forgetting to switch over to that mode when in these types of situations where I'm searching out that lone signal for some time. Will try to remember to use it next time I'm out on a woods or large field hunt. Once you start hearing targets it's best to switch back to threshold.
Almost forgot about the great debate we had going a month or so ago about whether setting up Silent Search as normal and then raising the threshold to just be able to hear it again might be amplifying soft/deep target signals in audio a bit to allow them to hear easier. I forgot to test that in the field but will try to remember on the next soft target I find. Anybody else played with this more and came to any conclusions?
Once again let's go straight to the source- The Minelab GT's manual...
"A slightly faster sweep speed is also possible, which makes the Silent Search mode ideal in areas of low target concentrations, such as the beach, where ground coverage is just as important as recovering the really deep targets. If a rich pocket or area is located, the operator can select the Threshold mode and slow down their sweep to ensure all targets are recovered."
So it appears Minelab jives with what we think, and that they also hint to a faster sweep speed being possible. If that's true then perhaps recovery speed (if not just sweep speed?) is altered in some way that makes it slightly faster? I would assume that without a threshold signal constantly needing to be processed and outputted to the speaker this *might* speed up the machine's processing a tiny bit, either resulting in it being able to keep up with a slightly faster sweep speed (without lagging behind and then getting unstable), and/or maybe the recovery speed is slightly sped up as well. Only way to tell for sure would be to sweep over a target in normal threshold mode as you increase your sweep speed until the target quality starts to degrade and then switch over to Silent search and see if you can get slightly faster than that with your sweep or at least notice a faster recovery (reset) speed before target quality starts to suffer.
Oh, and on the other (?) thread about air testing targets...I agree with you (think it was you) when you said that air testing on a machine should be by starting out far away and moving closer until the target registers properly. If you start close the machine is already in a way locked into that target's ID and so it will find it easier to "hold on to" that proper ID as you reach the fringes of detection for air testing. By doing the reverse it will give you a more realistic view of air testing, since in the ground you don't get the chance to start out close to the target and then move further away to try to bring out it's ID. It's the reverse of that. However, some times raising the coil away from the ground as you sweep a target will give you clues to it's identity that aren't easily noticed when it's close to the surface. For instance, a signal coin or coin spill that is near the surface and might sound like a large piece of metal like a can at first. If you move away from the target the "can" should still look just as big and sound just as harsh, while a coin (or coins) will tend to get smaller and/or softer.
One more thing about Silent Search- It can also be useful if tiny bits of metal, hot rocks, or ground minerals are bumping the threshold around a bit, making the threshold more of a distraction than a help. By turning Silent Search on it can in a sense be used as a buffer to eliminate those "ghost" targets yet let through anything real that might be deep/soft and so sound like a phantom along with the other ghost signals while in normal Threshold mode. Your ear might not be able to notice the difference or at the very least you might not notice because of the constant distractions. Another area where this might be useful is in spots where it's hard to keep the coil flat in relation to the ground, such as in fields with crop stubble. The constant changes of coil distance to the ground can cause the threshold to get uneven and ruin your concentration. Some will switch to Iron Mask Off for similar reasons. I look at that as a second "buffer" to help quiet the machine down but as yet have never had to use that as well. Which one is more useful in a situation (Silent Search or Iron Mask OFF) would be interesting to investigate. I'd try hunting with one or the other for a while and see which seems to offer the best costs/benefit savings. In really bad conditions using both might really smooth an otherwise unenjoyable place to hunt out. Just wish I would remember to try all these functions at places that they might produce a benefit at.
