All i want is to record from my micro korg to my laptop

[ritaheed]

will the sound quality not be rubbish that way?

[qUE]

will the sound quality not be rubbish that way?

In terms of the cable, no because the distance is so short and in most cases (even on cheap cable) the ground braded cable wraps around the main cores which give a reasonable interference dampening.

As for the line input on the laptop, yes, mobos nowerdays are so cheaply produced (even on expensive laptops) that the tracks are way to close to everything else and have quick/dirty float terminating circuits that you get pretty bad noise from the ICs on the inputs. Only way around this and I'd say this to anyone who has a new laptop is get an outboard USB audio device, that way you can at least isolate it from other electronics.

DAC/ADC IC quality is important to, but you'd end up paying megabucks for the decent brands (from personal experience; Analog Devices, ROHM and a few others) which tbh you're unlikely to have in consumer products.



Oh yeah and even more joy if you're using Windows 2000 onward. It's built-in idler will cause a ****ton of noise on the mobo from constantly forcing the CPU, etc. to sleep. And the best part is, you can't f. disable it :/

And before Mac fanbois start cheering, Linux has an idler to, so no doubt in my mind Darwin has it also. TBH Apple's audio hardware is a disgrace.