Ok, since this was my post to start with, let me state my understandings and concerns as to answering my original question first. When you arrow over to Sensitivity on the Live Menu, and press ZOOM, the RX gain, Txboost, all metal and disc shows up along with the live menu that has a box to check so that you will see gain, all metal and disc when you normally choose Sensitivity on the live menu and press ENTER. When in the ZOOM Sensitivity menu popup screen, If you press the arrows up or down, you will see that the Probe screen appears at some point, but disappears as you arrow up or down after that. For novices and the general layman person, there is nothing said anywhere that tells us that this will happen. I tried to find the way of showing the Probe menu all thru the V3I manual and did not find anything. I inadvertently found out by experimenting with the up and down arrow. If anyone out there that doesn't know this happens to highlight Sensitivity and press Zoom, they too will wonder where the Probe screen is, if the choice is on the wrong line.
OK, you have stated your concern that people may not know this.
Next, if I understand right, lets say we are hunting a very trashy lot and we have Rx gain at 10, all metal at 55 and disc at 85. First we have a hard time ground balancing, because there is so much trash on the ground and in the ground. Now, we start detecting in search mode and we have chatter, noisy signals all over the place and general confusion. if we go to Sensitivity on the live menu and press Zoom and make sure we are seeing the Probe menu, we see a high signal percentage. This to me means that that is the percentage of available signal that is not contributing to finding my target, so it is LOST, I also look at it as the "corrupted percentage of signal that is not helping me".
What you are hearing is signals that are being added to the target signal. You are not losing any of the target signal you are adding extra signals. These added signals add to to the total signal and brings the detector closer to an overload condition. These extra signals compete with the target signal and makes the target signal harder to hear.
If I change my settings to lower Rx gain to say 6 and disc to 75, then ground balance, swing the coil a bit and then arrow to Sensitivity and press ZOOM, my percentage of signal that was LOST, now is much lower.
The unwanted signals are reduced.
You believe that the target signal is reduced from 100% - 14.5% to a 85.5% target signal, or signal loss. What signal% is telling you is 14.5% of unwanted signal is being added to the unreduced target signal.
We all know that as signal% approaches 60% the detector overloads. If signal% was showing lost signal the total signal would be reduced and would actually take us farther from overload.
I believe this is the right interpretation of the percentage signal. Not all of us "other people" are experts, nor do we THINK we are experts, so any extra indication that we can get to help us better understand what is too noisy, why we are not running "smooth" and all the other terminology that the brand new novice is not really understanding.
I never claimed to be an expert and have never called myself an expert.
I used the numbers above for gain and disc as an example, I realize in real life conditions, I would lower the disc a little, try that, then lower the gain a little and try that. I know from a layman's view point that I could lower both way down and then the percentage would be low, but I probably would not find much. It seems that this will be a good tool to check yourself to see if your experience factors and knowledge of area factors are right or not.
By the way, this was done outside (NOT WATCHING TV UNDER MY CEILING FAN)
Good to know.