Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction?

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?"

Comments

If only it did work that way

[name_already_taken]

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

[beav007]

Doesn't that then make the assessment more likely?

Re:I Don't Know What You're Talking About

[PopeRatzo]

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.