Following up from my earlier post, I just got an email from ISOTOPE and this feature is part of a noise reduction special pricing plug in suite:
 
Dialogue De-noise plug-ins as part of the RX Plugin Pack
 
Jim
 
PS - I know you want to shoot the issue to eliminate it but in case you need to repair your recording.

jimkleban
I have never used this but I think there is an audio tool that let's you sample noise and then based upon the sampled noise, eliminates it from a targeted track.  (I might have dreamt this but somewhere in the way back machine I might have stumbled upon this).
 
Jim
 
PS - it might have been a noise reduction tool in Soundforge but not sure

This exists in some audio suites included in video editors (Adobe is one).  It also exists in RX5.

dwardzala

jimkleban
I have never used this but I think there is an audio tool that let's you sample noise and then based upon the sampled noise, eliminates it from a targeted track.  (I might have dreamt this but somewhere in the way back machine I might have stumbled upon this).
 
Jim
 
PS - it might have been a noise reduction tool in Soundforge but not sure

This exists in some audio suites included in video editors (Adobe is one).  It also exists in RX5.

Just used the noise reduction plugin within Sound Forge yesterday. Still works like a champ.

As we're now on the subject of noise reduction.  I've had pretty good success with Reafir.  It's free from Cockos.  It has a FFT noise reduction mode that works really well when you can sample the noise floor from your clip.
 
Here's the web page that describes it:  http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/ReaFIR.  See the "Subtraction" section for a description of how I use it to reduce noise.
 
Maybe this will be of use to you,
Paul

Thanks guys. I've got some audio restoration tools and with enough fidgeting I could probably go back and fix it, but as mentioned previously, my main goal is to determine what this is and how to avoid it in the future.
 
Below is the link to a quick sample on Soundcloud.  The first several seconds are in the midst of dialogue but it's still pretty noticeable.  The last few seconds I cut together really short snippets of the interference without any dialogue in the way.  This was thrown together in a matter of minutes so don't judge the sloppy editing. :)
 
https://soundcloud.com/streckfus/interference

Oh, also...
 
There's a PG-13 word in the audio snippet so listener discretion is advised.

That definitely sounds like a cell phone "calling home".

One question remains - are you monitoring audio at the input to your system or are you monitoring the out of the computer. I'd imagine the input, because in a setting like that  even a tiny bit of latency would get old quickly.

If that's the case then the noise is entering the system at some point post monitoring - that is, the signal you hear is clean, but the signal that is being recorded is corrupted.

So, what are you using for an audio interface - USB, Firewire, Lightpipe? Just trying to narrow down the field of suspects here<G>.
 
RF interference such as what you captured can enter on a single-ended or balanced connection. In general a balanced connection will reject more than a single-ended connection, but once you get up into RF you start to depend more on shielding than CMMR or even twisted pairs.

So it seems likely that some part of the path from microphone to computer is single-ended, and un-shielded. This part of the path is also after where ever you are picking up the monitor/cue feed. That's where I'd start looking.

When tracking vocals I'll typically monitor through SONAR so I can get a little reverb in the headphones, but I monitored directly through the interface when we recorded the podcast.
 
I'm using a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 firewire interface. Rode NT1-A (my mic) into the interface with a balanced XLR, AT2035 (his mic) into the interface with a balanced XLR. Yamaha HS8 monitors connected to the interface outs with balanced TRS-XLR cables. I've also got an Avid Eleven Rack connected to the interface via SPDIF. Sony MDR 7506 headphones for each of us. My channel was what recorded the interference.
 
I've never run into this before (cell phone has caused interference with the monitors before, but I've never had it recorded before), and only two things have changed recently: new monitors (upgraded Alesis M1 Active MKII to Yamaha HS8 monitors) and a wireless mouse. 
 
What's strange is that we recorded two podcasts that evening, pretty much back-to-back.  The first one picked up the interference.  We stepped out and came back after about five minutes, the next podcast recorded clean.  Our positioning changed a little bit since we moved mic stands out of the way to get up, etc. but the actual setup/monitoring remained the same.
 
All I can think is that maybe his phone was going nuts during that first session and our positioning was a perfect storm to pick up the interference, but again, it's strange that my mic/channel is what picked up the cell phone interference and not his.
 
Baffled.

streckfus:
 
I'll go out on a limb and say that I really don't think that sounds like a cell phone doing it's polling or communicating in a call.  I think it sounds more like interference from a wireless radio device like a wireless access point or wireless mouse.
 
Just a SWAG on that, but that's what I'd look at if that were happening to me.
 
Check out this thread, they were having issues doing vocal takes using a Rode NT1A.  Make sure to read the whole thing as they cover several perspectives of what could be causing the issue with some proposed solutions.
 
Maybe there's something in there that will help eliminate your issue,
Paul
 

That's what's got me confused. I've heard that sound several times before through my monitors, long before I got my wireless mouse, and before I got the NT1-A. Each and every time, moving the cell phone away from my work area fixed the problem.
 
But since I'd never recorded the interference before, and the wireless mouse is the newest element of my studio, I thought maybe it might've contributed to it.
 
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.