[Richard Crowley]

If you are seeking a practical response, you will need to reveal what your workflow is. Specifically, what platform (Mac? PC?) What NLE software (FCP? Premiere? Vegas? Avid?) In many cases, the NLE does the conversion for you, invisibly behind the scenes. That is not always a desirable thing, but it makes it convenient for casual users.

[Richard Crowley]

You should at least try the built-in microphones on the DR-100 before assuming you need another mic.

[Richard Crowley]

It is the ephemeral nature of RF waves that all sorts of things can cause similar symptoms. There could be an RF signal that is causing inter-modulation distortion only on the peaks, but not on the low-level signals. Remember that virtually all of our wireless mics us FM (frequency-modulation) and the higher-level the audio is, the wider bandwidth they take. So low-level audio could be “safe” while higher-level audio (and RF frequencies farther away from the center of the channel) could be “finding” this other RF who would rather have that frequency.

It seems likely that a simple scan for other users won’t reveal this kind of interference. It will take actually testing the system with speech to identify which channels are unusable in that venue.

More people are getting spectrum analyzers to practice “defensive channel selection”. Some are getting rather affordable, such as:

https://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/rf-explorer-3g-combo-p-1266.html?cPath=174

[Richard Crowley]

It sounds RF-related to me. Furthermore, I am assuming from the original narrative that the same mic, transmitter, receiver, recorder, and associated cables are working properly in other rooms/venues, which would appear to rule out fundamental signal level, interface, or operational problems.

The OP did not exactly reveal any details about the location which is in question, so we are left to shoot in the dark here.

[Richard Crowley]

When you say “two people behind a desk talking”, would it be safe to assume that this is indoors and not in a cavernous sound stage? With typical near reflections from ceiling, walls, desktop, etc. etc?

Be prepared to learn that there is NO effective microphone placement. Now, you could have some situation where you might be able to get away with breaking the “rule” about using shotgun mics around reflective surfaces (i.e. “indoors”). But if you DO have some unusual situation, we can’t tell from what you have revealed here.

[Richard Crowley]

Assuming your are talking about PC. If you are talking about Mac, then maybe someone else has a suggestion.

Check out TotalRecorder from https://www.highcriteria.com/
IMHO, it is a very good product at a killer price. (18 USD for the audio-only product, and similar low prices for the video versions)

The thing you may be missing is a way to configure the audio input on your computer to connect to the “stereo mix” which is what you normally hear from the computer’s audio output.

Some audio drivers have a built-in option to select “stereo mix” (or some similar designation) as the recording source. But if your computer doesn’t have that option (which most of them don’t seem to, IME), there are 3rd party “drivers” which “insert” themselves into the data path and make that data stream available as a selectable recording input on the computer.

[Richard Crowley]

It appears that ATT (and likely other carriers) and our beneficient US Federal Government are cooking up ever new ways of collecting billions of $$$ to try to stem that sinking ship of the Federal Budget.

They are devising new schemes to hold “Incentive Auctions” where they sell off currently in-use bandwidth to the highest bidder and then evict the residents, hand them some cash and tell them to go away and find “new spectrum” somewhere else (as if it existed).

https://www.fcc.gov/topic/incentive-auctions
https://attpublicpolicy.com/wireless/opportunity-in-the-600-mhz-band/

Sorry, but it becomes increasingly difficult trying to imagine that Common Sense is still to be found anywhere inside The Beltway. It appears that the Long-Term Evolution calls for the complete elimination of free OTA (over the air) television as we know it.

[Richard Crowley]

It would have been nice if they had mentioned any details that would have allowed fact-checking. Of course, there is no mention of this on the FCC website. Perhaps someone more credible than the NYT will report on this.

[Richard Crowley]

The connector itself does NOT “degrade quality”.

HOWEVER, the type of connector is highly indicative of what kind of circuit is inside AFTER the connector. As Mr. Rendell demonstrates, the kinds of equipment which use 3.5mm phone plugs for mic input have different (typically lower-quality, lower-gain, higher-noise, higher-distortion) mic input preamps.

[Richard Crowley]

I question your (assumed) premise that you must do this from behind a camera with a camera-mounted microphone. If you look at most of the decent interviews of that style on commercial TV, you will see that the interviewer is probably using a hand-held mic and holding it up to the people who are talking.

You said that you are “wary of getting a friend to do a boom mic”, but maybe you are looking at this from the wrong angle. I would have my friend aim the camera and I would use a hand-held mic to hold up to the people being interviewed. If you also need to record your questions, pull the mic back towards yourself, or use a lav on yourself.

I have extremely low expectations of using ANY microphone mounted ON the camera to get decent audio in this application.