I'm new to the forum so I first hope that I am doing this right.
I wanted this also on a new topic and I hope it has not been mentioned before.

It's impossible to plug the analog hole. Here is why.

First you can if you had to, plug your speaker terminals directly to a analog input, then use a peak meter to determine the correct level, sound quality GOOD. Then if you get rid of analog inputs, not to worry you will ALWAYS need a Mic input, you can get stereo mics, and feed the signal with an adaptor to there ports. My whole point is, we are analog, and therefore can never plug the whole, if that would be achieved will stifle creativity among new people. Also plugging it completely will be expensive and difficult since a guitar would have to convert its analog signal to digital for the mixer or amp. This also would effect the sound quality since there are many rates for digital 16-24 bit and then your sampling rate. The higher your go the better your quality, but with analog you have the MAX in quality with a device like that, so its impossible to plug the whole, and a online hacker can sell devices to fix that plug, so no MATTER what you do there is ALWAYS a work around for what man makes man can break.

Sorry applegodel8 but I don’t get your point ! Why do you want to Plug the Analog Hole???

This is definitely NOT to be recommended, whether or not this mysterious topic gets unravelled into something coherent.

This is indeed a most peculiar thread...

Thanks Seán for fixing broken quote tag

This is over on the news area on cdfreaks. I think he's trying to figure this whole thing out.

There are some old news articles covering the music industry attempting to plug the analogue loophole. As applegodel8 mentioned, there is virtually nothing they can do to stop legacy analogue recording equipment from being able to record the audio output from newer music players, radio, etc., but there has been work carried out to interfere with the analogue-to-digital quantisation process in which an analogue sound would come out noisy when converted to digital, such as inaudible noises become audible during this process or at least during the lossy compression to MP3, etc. See this news story I published back in 2004 about Darknoise. So far I'm not aware of any music services or CDs using Darknoise technology, but then again, despite their claim that their inaudible watermarks can not be heard, this may not be the case for all playback equpment.

What they are working on now is trying to get manufacturers to implement technology that prevents recording if a copy protection signal is detected in the audio, much like how copy protection compliant VCRs and DVD recorders will refuse to record a source protected by Macrovision. If this becomes successful, then in order for consumers to be able to record a copy protected source several years later when virtually all equipment incorporating anti-piracy measures is widespread, they will need to get hold an old analogue audio recorder, PC soundcard, etc. in order to record in analogue.

As far as I'm aware of, the only way to connect speaker terminals up to recording device is with the use of a line level converter. These are mainly used to connect up a car stereo to a speaker amplifier where the car stereo does not have a line-output. What the converter does is take in the high level output from the speaker connectors and converts this down to a low level suitable for passing to the line-input of an amplifier. Here's an example I Googled upon.

If speaker terminals are directly wired up to a line-input of any recording device, the 'thump' that is caused by powering on most players may be enough to blow the input of the recording device.

Oh I see now, Seán - thanks for the explanation. I didn't realise that measures were being taken to prevent analogue copying too...

Cheers for the explanation, Seán - at least now I know what this thread is about! The original post had me intrigued

Sorry for the confusion, and now you get what I am saying, I am not always good at wording things. So Sean thanks for making them understand, I just keep seeing this hole thing mentioned, and it is quite impossible to plug that whole. Analog will always exist.