Line in is mostly for recording other stuff than voice. Fortunately people realized that rerouting line into out makes sense for people.
I guess they didn't know that with the 2.0 or it is indeed broken.

The line-in on the Sound Blaster 1.5 and 2.0 is for recording only, but can't be mixed through to the Speaker Out. What can you do? Get an external mixer. I ordered a 4 channel Stereo mixer from eBay (came from AUS) for ~ $100. Unfortunately one trimpot was faulty and it's been with the supplier for almost 2 months now 🙁

Excellent, thanks for the help guys. What would I do without vogons?

Good luck with the mixer Mau1wurf, 2 months! I think I'll just tuck this card in the shed for now. I wanted to use it because it was the first sound card I bought as a kid, I must have been 15 or so. It was a budget card at that point - probably around '94 or so - but it rocked my world. Even with those crappy little speakers they use to bundle them with. I vividly remember installing it in my 486SX33 and loading wolf3d for the first time. Wow, I nearly fainted dead away!

The crappy little 2.0 speakers are what makes the truly retro 😀 I use little 2.0 speakers (though the are new), and it really does add to the retro feeling 😁 Back in the day we didn't have subs yet, though some had a proper Hi-Fi tower...

I tried various hi fi speakers / amps with my PC as a kid but they were always cheap crap I'd get from garage sales, etc. But I'm using some new 2.0's at the moment and I like the simplicity of them.

2.0 has sockets for the CMS chips doesn't it?

Yes + another socket for a third chip necessary for CMS support.

Where would one get these chips though? Do they ever come up for sale on eBay, etc?

I know the chip content has been dumped and reproduced but my understanding is that this will work for the revision 1+, not the revision 0 which I have.

badmofo wrote:

Where would one get these chips though? Do they ever come up for sale on eBay, etc?

I know the chip content has been dumped and reproduced but my understanding is that this will work for the revision 1+, not the revision 0 which I have.

They are very very very rare and likely cost quite a bit.

Best thing to do is get a 1.5. That only needs the two Philips chips and it also doesn't need a -5V PSU for modern PCs.