Steve made a good video to help demonstrate the 'concepts' of good-target masking that involves nearby common ferrous trash. He also did a good job of explaining the settings used, and the very important knowledge that two targets positioned too close together will result in a 'blended' Audio Tone and an errant visual VDI response.
Anyone can use any detector or coil they have on-hand and duplicate the very same set-ups using similar Coin targets and Iron Nails to see how their detector and coil perform. I have done these types of tests all the time with any detector I've had since the latter '60s because I often hunt in a lot of iron debris.
However, if any reader knows me, I always have something else to say as a 'reminder' or to 'call attention to' something, and this post is no exception ....
If Steve turned 90° and swept the center-axis of the search coil over a coin with the series of nails now in a different orientation to his bigger-size DD coil, the end results would likely be different. Why? Because there would be more ferrous target metal under the search coil, and that will drastically effect the performance of most detectors.
Thus, the long and short of it all is, if your detector and coil can't do what the Apex & Viper coil can do in Steve's video, with the same targets and lay-out, then it's obvious the Apex & Viper coil have an 'edge' for some hunting environments. If you have a similar-size coil on a different model and it can do what Steve's unit did, then turn 90° and see just how well your detector / coil combo can handle things.
Monte