The issue: I heard some distortion through my headphones while testing an X-H1 at my desk last week. I tried changing out all components but still had a niggling distortion. I even tried my two other X-H1 cameras in the same configurations; all while sitting at my desk.
I was not happy to hear the distortion and reached out for answers. Later, I used the cameras and microphones and monitors at a sound studio and did not hear the same distortion. I tried to duplicate the problem today in my living room, far away from electrical devices and was surprised when I could not duplicate the issue.
Here is my addenda to the article I wrote about the distorting monitoring circuit last week:
Edited on 04/09: Interestingly we did not have the headphone distortion problem on a shoot we did last Friday, using many of the same components. To be fair to the Fuji X-H1 I went back and re-tested again. This time I did it in my living room. Components all over my coffee table. But the times I tested the cameras before were all done at the desk in my office. I took the camera, headphones and a microphone back to the office, sat down and listened again and there was the distortion. So I started looking around my desk to see just what the heck might be causing the distortion I was hearing.
For starters my desk is the epicenter of about ten hard drives, each in their own enclosure, each with its own power supply. Then there is the 27 inch iMac about two feet from my little test area. Oh, and there's also a dual band modem/router, and, and, and...... As I moved the camera set up closer to the desk and tested it the distortion was a bit more obvious and when I moved away from the desk it diminished. And when I moved to the living room, about 30-40 feet from all electrical circuits, the microphone pre-amplifiers were as silent as mute angels.
So, this is a big mea culpa. Sometimes we imagine that technology has perfected all the routine stuff and that it will work perfectly no matter how much we try (wittingly or unwittingly) to fuck it all up. The pre-amps are a bit sensitive to huge, giant, unsavory electrical fields. Can you blame them?
I am now chastened and must send an e-mail to my friends at Fuji to apologize to them for blaming my bad technique on what I see is now a nearly perfect camera.
In addition, all the audio that we ran into three X-H1 cameras at our video shoot last Friday is perfect. Not a trace of distortion or noise.
I'm sorry to have been so far off on this and will try to be much more careful in my testing of microphone and headphone circuits in the future.
As you can see I made a bone-headed mistake and mischaracterized the performance of the camera. I am sorry for that and I also want to apologize to Fuji for unfairly dissing their camera instead of eliminating such an obvious source of interference.
Now I will never be able to say that I am without flaw again. So sad. But that's the nature of a mea culpa.
