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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?"
So that leaves us with some interesting cases:
Look, if you could give us more information like what operating system you use and what motherboards you're using, I'd be willing to track down the manuals on them and verify there's no line-in jack and take a boomerang to the head if I'm mistaken. But couldn't this problem have been solved with a couple bucks? My eeePC netbook has a line-in. I really don't see them disappearing at all.
P.S. If you're looking for something a little more professional, external Audigys and M-Audio Pre USBs are useful for what you're doing though they are pricey ($200 USD).
My work here is dung.
No-no-no. You need a 50 dollar gold plated monster transistor for it to sound reasonably ok. All my 5 cent transistors are solid gold.
Well, you know, there are still a couple of people around that play musical instruments (you know, those expensive things you don't have to plug in), and we sometimes like to record the sounds that we make. And others sometimes go to listen to people playing these instrument things, and they sometimes like to record the sounds. Craziness!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Microphone jacks have gain. Gain leads to clipping. And clipping leads to the dark side.
Why do you need two inputs? I highly doubt there's much difference between the line-in jack on your sound card and the stereo microphone jack.
A microphone input is expecting microphone-level signals - not line level. There's a big difference, and without something similar to a DI box to correct the level, all you'll get if you put line level audio into a microphone jack is distorted overdriven noise.
Putting moderation advice in your
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.
Putting moderation advice in your
Seriously, anyone who can't find analogue sound input for their computer hasn't bothered looking very hard. I can find it for you USB, Firewire, PCI, or PCIe. Stereo, 8 channel, 128 channel, whatever you like. You name the kind of audio capture you need, someone out there makes a product for it. All of them will be better quality than the line-in jack on a laptop, which generally has really poor filtering and thus lots of noise.
The parent is absolutely right in terms of the Behringer as a good, cheap solution. Need something better? You can get something like the M-Audio MobilePre (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePreUSB.html) which has pretty good converters and some features you don't need. Still not enough, have to have no holds barred? Get yourself an Benchmark ADC1 (http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/adc1/) converter, which is just about as good as it get.
No matter what the level, from a highly adequate $35 USB audio interface, up to a $1,700 dedicated converter, you can get something that'll meet your needs, and do so online.
The only reason line in is dying on soundcards is people aren't using it much. On laptops, space is also a premium so why bother? Many desktop cards still have it, as they've got the space for more inputs.
This "musical instrument" cancer MUST BE STOPPED. When unlicensed amateurs are permitted to record anything they want, they devalue the musical landscape for legitimate musicians who are under corporate contracts. Do you want Miley Cyrus to starve, and Lady Gaga to go naked? Major recording studios stand to lose MILLIONS of dollars. We need legislation to control the unlicensed spread of microphones and pickup jacks. Anything capable of capturing sound should be subjected to a 60% surtax, the proceeds of which should be delivered directly to the Harry Fox Agency.
Why don't all car radio setups come with a line-in jack? Even many of the aftermarket ones don't have them (on the front, at least). Such a cheap part, and yet so many people use their ipods via FM tuner or tape adapter.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I know that it's an age-old rule of correcting others that one makes a mistake of the same nature in the corrective statement (I'm likely to suffer a few), but those phone jacks that you list (typically called TS for tip-sleeve when mono or TRS for tip-ring-sleeve when stereo or balanced mono) are most commonly sized in 1/4", 3.5mm, and 2.5mm. 1/2" would be awesome, but I've never seen one.
Microphone port pumps some current into whatever is connected to it (to power the microphone up)
Line In doesn't provide any power, it only analyses incoming signal from external source, and will be often separated through transoptors or the like to protect the hardware from overcurrent from difference of potential between the devices.
Not sure why this was modded +5 informative; it's a load of hooey...
Normal dynamic microphones are passive and do not require any external power to "power the microphone up". They generate a small current, usually from a coil moving inside a magnet. This is why you need a pre-amp of some kind to bring your mic-level signal up to a line-level signal that a regular amp can deal with. Your sound card has this built in.
If you have a condensor microphone, then it will need external power of some kind to function. This usually comes in the form of phantom power (+48V usually) over a balanced twisted pair microphone wire. I can promise you that your average soundcard (and pretty much anything with 1/8" jacks) does *not* supply phantom power. You need an external power supply of some kind to use a condensor mic with your soundcard.
The only real difference between a line in and a mic in on your soundcard is the expected input gain. A mic input has a pre-amp and expects a mic level input. If you feed it a line level input and it doesn't attenuate it (or bypass the preamp) then you'll clip the hell out of the signal.
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