In David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, the titular story element was a fully immersive video game that, in order to experience, players had to plug directly into a jack at the base of their spine. While Alesis has not yet developed an eXistenZ to USB cord for jacking into your quasi-legal NES ROM emulator, they're probably well on their way. Check out the new Alesis AudioLink series, if you don't believe me.

The AudioLink cables come in three flavors:

• GuitarLink - 1/4" to USB for direct recording of electric guitars and basses
• MicLink - XLR to USB for plugging in any passive mic (no USB phantom power, sorry)
• LineLink - 1/4" to USB that accommodates any lie-level source, like keyboards, sequencers, drum machines, samplers, etc, etc.

16-bit, 44.1k conversion is handles by the cables, and the elimination of any intermediate hardware also eliminates added noise or subtracted signal quality. The AudioLink cables are a great choice, I'd say, for any one who composes or demos songs on their home computer, especially if you've got a portable recording setup.

MikeLink and LineLink will retail for around $49 US and GuitarLink for about $39 US.