02/23/2019
On another forum a post was written about using boosters/enhancers and here's what I posted (I've added a little to bring the whole thing into context as I was replying to someone).
This is an analogy of threshold levels and how they relate to target signals. I look at it like waves on the ocean moving a small boat - just as the threshold coming out of the detector is a carrier of the target signal. Too little threshold and the target wont be carried/moved efficiently. Too much and its swamped.
As for boosters/enhancers - I've always maintained that faint targets transmitted electrically via audio to the headphones/speaker, may not have enough electrical energy to change the way the coil in the speaker/headphones is being driven i.e. to change the sound from the threshold tone. All speakers and headphones need a certain amount of voltage/current to physically move the coil to produce sound. Same way you need an amplifier on a microphone. The microphone is putting out and electrical signal. Its just too small to drive speakers/headphones. This is why you use a booster/enhancer. And as ** said - the GPX battery amplifier and WM12 module amps are way to coarse and rough.
Now the difference with a booster/enhancer - a booster will just amplify the signal as a whole, threshold included. An enhancer will perform some form of manipulation of the signal. Yes it can only work with what comes out of the detector, but ask any audio engineer - lots of techniques are available to manipulate an audio signal. There is no need to 'colour' the audio - this implies addition of unwanted noise. The main idea is to try and make target signals louder in respect to the threshold so that faint deep targets (as well as the smaller shallower ones) stand out over the threshold tone. The threshold/target signal ratio is the all important one. I've managed to work out a technique to achieve this, and while its not perfect, I feel it works quite well.
While the designers of modern detectors certainly know what they are doing with regards to detector design and engineering, and after examining quite a few of the audio designs in the current range of detectors, I can safely say that the audio side of things does not seem to be a big priority in their design.
