In simple terms, my computer system is showing its age, and though I'm not looking forward to the expense of replacing it, at some point it'll have to be done, and I'll have to reconsider my audio interface strategy.
Up to now, my strategy has been to use a Sound Blaster Platinum X-fi card. The reason I've used this over any other thing is that it does what I want, and has been situated very conveniently for my setup. It's an internal motherboard-mounted PCI card BUT has a front-mounted I/O section that sits where you'd normally mount a CD drive or some other peripheral. So, right on the face of my tower case are a series of jacks for different inputs. There's a quarter-inch mike or guitar cord jack, there's an optical in/out for digital, there's an SPDIF in/out with RCA-style jacks, there's a stereo pair of RCA line-ins. You will note that there is no mention of professional-level balanced jacks for professional-level audio gear.
This is where the conundrum comes in. From what I can tell, nowadays PC audio comes in two types: stuff intended for home use, or stuff intended for pro use. There's little in-between, if any. I don't want to limit myself to fumbling around with 1/8" jacks on the back of my tower, but I also don't really need a suite of very pro jacks and outboard processing. I use the interface mostly for:
- Plugging a quarter-inch jack in for guitar work.
- Plugging a mic in that has a quarter-inch jack.
- Plugging in a stereo line RCA pair for sampling from LPs and CDs and other home audio sources.
- Sometimes, taking in digital signals from a DAT machine, Minidisc or CD player.
So what's my options? Am I just going to have to resign myself to kludging together adapters for the pro inputs, or is there anything out there that is a simpler, not-really-pro-but-not-just-home-audio solution that I haven't found?