Mate settings are different every time, this trip was pretty good for emi, no lightning around, and the ground was pretty tame.
Stab 10, gain 7, threshold just humming. This trip, I was in enhance, special extra. Audio normal, Still got odd bip here and there, but pretty stable.
Last trip I did, was on a patch only about 250m away, and I had to use enhance, special smooth, audio quiet, gain 7, stab 9, just to get a steady threshold, but I found gold with those settings, even a tiny 0.07 grammer.
As the day gets hotter, I sometimes drop my gain a notch or 2, there are little pockets of hot ground, about the size of a big coil, and some of them sound exactly like a target, and some start like a target, but then start to "groan" for lack of a better description. There is no way I can ground balance them out either. Sometimes, there might be a narrow stip of ground like this as well.
I fluked a a small water worn piece from a hot ground spot once, and noticed that the hard clay was much deeper than the rest of the holes I was digging. Thought I should take a bag of the dirt back and pan it, but my pack was heavy enough already, and I just couldnt be bothered!