Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? 411
SlashD0tter writes "Many older sound cards were shipped with line-out, microphone-in, and a line-in jacks. For years I've used such a line-in jack on an old Windows 2000 dinosaur desktop that I bought in 2000 (600 Mhz PIII) to capture the stereo audio signal from an old Technics receiver. I've used this arrangement to recover the audio from a slew of old vinyl LPs and even a few cassettes using some simple audio manipulating software from a small shop in Australia. I've noticed only recently, unfortunately, that all of the four laptops I've bought since then have omitted a line-in jack, forcing me to continue keeping this old desktop on life support. I've looked around for USB sound cards that include a line-in jack, but I haven't been too impressed by the selection. Is the line-in jack doomed to extinction, possibly due to lobbying from vested interests, or are there better thinking-outside-the-box alternatives available?"
audiophiles (Score:4, Interesting)
There's inevitably some noise that creeps in with a line-level jack on your PC. It's not much, but it drives audiophiles to distraction. Moving it to a USB device helps reduce the noise by an order of magnitude or so. That may be one thing driving the change.
If only it did work that way (Score:5, Interesting)
It's POSSIBLE that with that disabled the mic port acts just like a line-in.
It doesn't. Trust me. I was handed 12 hours of video with overdriven audio that can't be corrected (there's no good correction for clipped audio), all recorded that way because someone set up the recorder with line level audio going into the mic jack and never checked the recorded levels.
Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't recall ever having an RCA line-in jack on any vanilla computer, unless I installed a high-end consumer sound card like some of the "pro" Sound Blasters or an actual professional sound card like an RME Hammerfall or M-Audio Audiophile or Delta.
Because I'm a media producer, I've got all sorts of devices for inputting audio into computers, from simple 1/4" to USB guitar cables (no kidding!) to multi-thousand dollar Apogee A/D converters. You can now get a device that will do 24bit/192kHz sound recording for a computer for less than $100 (and throw in a phantom power microphone preamp to boot). The choices have never been greater.
And yes, unless you're hung up on the shape of the little gizmo that plugs into the little hole, every computer from laptop to Mac Pro has a way to input audio (aka "line-in") jack. Sometimes, the jack actually does double duty as mic-in and line in, and the little mixer applet that comes with it will attenuate or boost the signal accordingly.
Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About (Score:2, Interesting)
I second this. Soundblaster cards, as crappy as Creative is, have good jack support. I have a Xi-Fi platinum (with the front panel headers) and it has line in jacks, multiple microphone jacks, optical in / optical out etc. I don't know what their cards are like these days but I'm sure they'll have one with the RCA jacks.
Also I just want to say the RCA type dual line in jacks have never been popular on sound cards as far as I know
Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About (Score:3, Interesting)
>Also I just want to say the RCA type dual line in jacks have never been popular on sound cards as far as I know
But they should be. I never fail to break those dinky 1/8" connectors. It's just a cost issue and what people are "satisfied" with. Most people are fine with 1/8". Personally, I've been sick of them for years.
RCA pre-molded cables are horrible. They use incredibly tiny amounts of wire, and an RCA cable is virtually guaranteed to break in time.
But the RCA connector is great. It's a far-flung industry standard and you can make your own cables pretty easily. The connector is grounded and the channels isolated. It's a virtual drop-in replacement for a guitar patch (1/4").
The only thing that's really better is XLR [wikipedia.org]. And I wouldn't expect that on a sound card.
Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About (Score:3, Interesting)
That's easy: the connectors are bigger, and there are two of them. The result is higher cost. 1/8" phono jacks are probably cheaper (esp. since you only need one), can handle both L and R on one jack, and take up much less space. As a result, it's easy to stick a phono jack on the back of a computer motherboard, or even on a notebook computer, but adding dual RCA jacks to a computer usually means adding an extra expansion-port plate.
Not to mention that most users think a single 1/8" stereo jack is far more convenient, and virtual all computer speakers use 1/8" plugs.
The only downside is that stereo phono jacks have more noise than separate RCA jacks, since the L and R signals are not isolated from each other in the cable and can have crosstalk. Of course, most people can't hear well enough to notice, or simply don't care, so for 99% of users, phono jacks are better.
If you really wanted to go pro and minimize noise you'd use a pair of balanced lines (TRS or XLR).
p.s. not sure why you keep saying "phono", these jacks usually run at line level, which is not phono.
Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About (Score:3, Interesting)
That will sound like crap (Score:4, Interesting)
for two reasons
1. (as another poster said) - you're attenuating and then amplifying a signal: noise
2. LPs are recorded with the high frequencies boosted, and this is then attenuated in a dedicated circuit within the receiver. By skipping this, you're going to end up with tinny recordings (did I mention noise?).
Seriously, unless you've got a nice sound interface, don't bother recording LPs, cassettes, etc - the results won't be worth it. Cetainly that USB thing from thinkgeek (linked earlier) won't produce good recordings. Unless it's a bootleg or something... I've got a nice multitrack firewire interface, and even then I'd only think about recording LPs, cassettes, etc if I had a really nice deck..
Re:Use Mic jack (Score:2, Interesting)