[Jevon Nicholas]

Thanks for your detailed response Richard. I’m hoping to do brief interviews with other education staff for internal professional development purposes, most likely outside of classrooms. Essentially I’ll try to interview them away from their classes, probably in a side office or wherever the background noise level is lowest. I’m unlikely to have any helpers, except perhaps students.

The dual-system audio idea came about as I was considering purchasing a dSLR that does great 4K video footage, but has no option to disable the auto gain control and has no headphone output. I was hoping that the recorder might mean be a way around it, then synching in post production. Since then, I’ve decided against that camera now anyway owing to budget considerations. I also do some voiceovers for tutorial videos for work, so I’m planning to use the recorder as a USB interface device for that. I do take your point about making things perhaps a little more complex than they need to be though.

The Sennheiser wireless lav system I use on my existing video camera produces great results and I’ve been extremely happy with it. I guess I was hoping to avoid the hassle of having to clip the lav onto the speaker etc, but in reflecting on your advice, I’m now thinking it could be the best solution. I’m familiar with how it works and know how to set it and operate it too so that’d take some of the learning curve out of the whole affair. Another option may be to borrow a wired handheld mic (one that you’d see broadcast journalists use) from the music department.