Recording on SB Live line-in

[John Heim]

I can't record the audio I hear when I plug my VCR or stereo into the 
line-jack on my SB Live sound card. I can record if I plug it int the mic 
jack but the quality isn't as good.  I've used aumix to set the level of 
the line-in to 64 which sounds good. But recording with sox gives me 
nothing but silence.  Ie:

$ aumix -l 64 -m 64
$sox -t ossdsp /dev/dsp bogus.wav

That works if I have my VCR connected to the mic although the quality is 
poor.  Can I tell it to record from the line-in but not from the mic? Maybe 
aumix isn't the best tool to use.

Alternately, maybe I could get the mic to work...  The problem with the mic 
jack is that I get only the left or the right channel. I have a cable with 
2 RCA jacks on one end and a stereo jack on the other. The 2 RCA jacks are 
plugged into the line-out on the VCR, left and right. The stereo jack is 
plugged into the mic on the sound card. Only 1 of the RCA jacks matter. The 
other I might as well leave dangling because I don't hear that channel no 
matter what.  I can get the left channel on the VCR if i plug the jack that 
works into the left line-out jack on the VCR or I can get the right channel 
by plugging it into the right line-out jack.  So the mic is acting as if 
there's a stereo-mono converter in there somewhere.

I know the cable is good because:
1. I can hear both channels if I plug it into the line-in on the soundcard. 
But as I explained above, then I can't record.
2. I have a second cable and that one does the same thing
3.  Both cables work fine with another sound card