If you are planning to do much recording using the line inputs on your sound card, you may wish to build a line-in box. You can think of this box as an extension cord, which plugs into your sound card and extends the lines in to a more convenient spot.

The exact configuration of the box and connecting cable, will depend on what type of input jacks are on your sound card, and what type of cables you wish to plug in to it.

In my case, I needed a 1/8" mono miniplug for my mic input, and a 1/8"stereo miniplug for my line input to the sound card. At the box, I converted these to more useable 1/4" phone for mic input, and RCA type phono jacks (L & R) for the line input. This makes the mic input compatable with guitar cords, and the line-in with stereo components.

The box itself can be constructed of about anything sturdy. I used luan plywood, but project boxes (and all the jacks & plugs) are readily available at Radio Shack. All the cable must be shielded; it may be easier to buy patch cords with one end that you need, then snip the other and solder it to the jacks in your box. You could just buy the appropriate patch cords, leave them dangling, and forget the box entirely, but that's no fun!