I'm doing some voice recording for my flash animations and I'm using a shure
sm57 with a midiman mic preamp. I used to feed the 1/4" line out from my mic
preamp to the 1/4" input on my soundblaster's LiveDrive unit (which is
basically an extension of the sound card with 1/4" inputs) -- the problem is
that I just started using it again after about a year and a half and for
some reason can't get it to work. The computer won't recognize it--no matter
how many times I uninstall the drivers and in the device manager and then
reinstall it. Enough rambling on, I went to radio shack today and picked up
a 1/4" stereo to 1/8" stereo adapter and just plugged that right into the
card instead-works fine, but since I have nothing to compare it to, I'm not
sure if it sounds worse than if I had been using the 1/4" ins.

In short, is there that much of a difference between 1/4" and 1/8",
particularly when the cable itself is a 1/4" one; only the plug (1/4" - 1/8"
adapter) is 1/8"? Thanks.