Much like the dongles built into some USB headsets, this cable actually acts as its own sound card. Yes, it’s pretty wild and quite frankly, holds a lot of promise.

A company called SoundTech is looking to simplify the process of hooking your electric musical instrument up to your computer for digital recording. With the introduction of the LightSnake USB, dubbed a soundcard in a cable, SoundTech effectively eliminates the need for a dedicated external USB audio interface. The USB end of the cable has an embedded digital-to-analog converter and preamplifier, as well as a light that flickers when the device is passing a signal, while the other end terminates in a gold-plated quarter-inch instrument plug. This lets guitarists, bassists, and keyboardists plug one end into their instruments and the other directly into their computers (Mac or PC, no drivers needed) without going through an amplifier and audio interface. The 10-foot shielded cable also ships with a quarter-inch to eighth-inch adapter and a quarter-inch male to dual-quarter-inch female splitter.

The LightSnake USB is currently available at major online musical instrument retailers for $69.99 list and is the first of a whole family of products geared toward making digital recording less of a mess of cables and devices…. Source: ExtremeTech

[tags]mac,pc,headset,cable,soundcard,shielded[/tags]