I too saw that Explorer guys were kicking my b*tt on depth. Perfectly "calling" silver coins at deeeep depths in the turf, with no problem. I'd go over the flagged signal with my Whites Eagle, and had to admit, that no matter how I set it up, no matter how perfectly ground balanced I had it, no matter how liberal I was on what I was willing to chase, that their Explorer signals just had more "umpth"
So I broke down and went out and bought one.
Immediately my reaction was the same as yours: "This sounds like a flock of sick geese!" These mentors would try and try to coach me on-line, or over the phone, on how to set it, what to listen for, etc... To no avail. Everything sounded the same. But here's how the light finally went on: One of them took me out to a pounded park, where silver STARTS at 7" deep, and flagged a few signals. It wasn't till he flagged a few such signals, and I watched the way he swung, listened in (with a headphone splitter) to what he was hearing, watched the way he isolated certain sounds, the way he swung, criss-crossed, wiggled the coil, etc... THEN the "lights went on" and I was hooked.
You see? There is no way to describe a "sound" in print. It simply can't be done. It has to be shown/heard. So try to hook up with a skilled explorer user (not just a sandbox hunter, but someone who routinely comes in with the oldies), and see if they'll flag signals for you to compare. Not just good ones, but also some bad signals that he'd say "I'd pass", so he can tell you what a bad sound is too. Once you've seen a few such signals side by side, and heard some deeper whispers, then you'll know what you're listening for.
One thing you can do, to help, in the short-run, is this: Black out (edit out) everything on your screen except the upper right 1/4 or 1/5 of your screen (basically zincs and up). Hunt like that for many days, in spots that are prolific with clad and easy targets. By doing that, you are eliminating 7/8 of your "orchestra", making it easier to temporarily learn the sounds (albeit only of the higher conductors) at first. Watch the depth bar, and try to learn the bar depth verses the sounds of the easy clad. Then slowly, after a few days, open up your screen to allow more sounds/TIDs in. Like lower it down to accept square tabs and up. Then a few days later, lower it to accept round tabs and up. Then later, lower it more to accept nickels and up. And so forth, and so on. Eventually you'll have your whole screen opened up on the TID, while your mind has been slowly tuned to learn all the tones, from highs to low, in a less confusing manner.
One final note: In ferrous mode, you can have your screen totally open (including the left hand side iron section). But in conductive mode, you'll need to keep your left hand 1/3 of the screen (iron zone) blacked out. You can do that by using the factory pre-set "smart screen", or just manually edit out ("iron mask"), the left 1/3 or so of the screen.
