It is the same for a Turntable, Tape player or mini disc player, I am going through the pail blue input that I play the likes of the mini disc through as for sound card I am not sure it comes up as 'Realtek AC97' any help?
Have you got the Stereo Mixer available in your sound devices to record from?
If you cannot see it for Windows 7 or Vista, select Start, Control Panel, Sounds - under recording devices see if the Stereo Mixer is there. The XP path is slightly different but same principle.
If not right click the empty space in the centre of the dialog box and select Show disabled devices and Show Disconnected Devices - see image
The Stereo Mixer will then be revealed - right click it to enable it.
You should then be able to set the Stereo Mixer as the recording device in ACL.
I can get the stereo mixer up and change the defaults, but in the 'input and level automation' the volume is set to zero and faint with no option to adjust or set to automatic, the automatic balance adjust is ticked but faint, if I click on 'automatically find audio channel' it selects what is set as default but there is still no input volume.
The unavailability of the stereo mixer and others would suggest the sound card drivers are the motherboard manufacturers cut down set of Realtek drivers.
You need to determine your computers motherboard make and model and check its specification to see if you have a Realtek HD Audio sound card installed. If so you can download the full set of drivers from Realtek and install them.
Thanks for all your help, it has turned out that nothing more than the line imput on the PC front is faulty, the one on the back works fin and all is now recording, simply ah.