Audio recording "quality" is complex and often poorly defined. If you go to Youtube and watch recordings of criminal activities, you will note that most of them have extremely poor audio recordings.
The very first, and most important, consideration is room acoustics. The room reverberation, the type, position and proximity of the microphone to the subject...all contribute to the quality of the audio pickup. The human ears/brain processing of audio is not a good indication of the quality of the audio being recorded. The Haas Effect, which basically describes the ability of humans to understand audio in reverberant spaces, does not apply to devices such as microphones, recorders, etc. To determine if "quality" audio can be recorded, use a portable recorder at the proposed location of the microphone. Listen to the playback, and if of sufficient quality, locate your microphone there. The rest of the audio chain is not as critical as the above. Assuming the camera and VMS audio signal processing is halfway decent, you should get out what you put in (GIGO).
The most challenging environment can be as small as a law enforcement interview room. Most of these spaces are hard surfaces, metal furniture and no carpeting, with limited microphone location opportunities, all of which contribute a very reverberant and difficult space in which to record audio. I have successfully used a special type of microphone, a variable line array that automatically adjusts its gain and directivity to the sound sources, made by TOA Electronics, to help overcome these issues. It is not cheap, around $1,600, but it works. If very high quality is required, I suggest employing the services of an audiovisual company with extensive experience in live sound pickup. If less critical, experiment to try for the best results possible.
Sorry to be so long-winded, but you picked a very complex topic.
