If you do any digital recording, you know the pain of the soundcard. Ever since the dawn of digital music, recording buffs have struggled with the soundcard in its various incarnations: ISA and PCI cards, USB- or FireWire-based external modules of all shapes and sizes...it's a pain to deal with and more importantly, it's expensive when all you want to do is plug and play, literally. A company called SoundTech is trying to cut away the hardware as much as possible with a product they call the Lightsnake. It's a really simple idea: put an XLR or TRS jack on one of a cable and put a USB plug on the other end. Plug the XLR/TRS end into a microphone, guitar or keyboard and plug the other end into a computer, opening your favorite sound editing program and let the cable take care of the rest with its built-in analog-to-digital converters. Pretty cool, huh?

The Lightsnake takes its name from the "Live When Lit" technology that SoundTech built into both ends of the cable - the plugs give off a green glow when the cable is transmitting information. The system is entirely plug-and-play, working off drivers included in Windows and Mac OS and SoundTech promises an ASIO driver for compatible recording programs. The only downside I can see at the moment is the bit-depth of the recording: even though the industry standard has gone to 24-bit, the Lightsnake tops out at 16-bit, the same quality as your standard CD. Still, for people who do a lot of work online (I'm looking at you, podcasters), the $70 may be a godsend.

Via Gizmodo