I just purchased a Thinkpad T60 laptop recently, and when i plugged in my microphone, i could not monitor (hear) the input signal. The laptop has a SoundMAX built in card, is it possible it doesn't have this capability? If yit does, how do i activate it? if not, do i need to buy a new sound card? (any recommendations on an inexpensive one?)
Thanks for any help. I'm new to recording on a PC; i've been recording music on a MAC, which has this feature built in.

Did you get this sorted?

Two things to do -

In the control panel of your computer go to your audio controls (sounds and multimedia) - for audio and voice recording select the 'line- in' (this might not be a feature of newer computers)

The second thing to do is in the device set up of your software - make sure that the soundcard is in full duplex mode - this allows sounds to be recorded and monitored at the same time.

If you are recording in via line in and monitoring from the phones jack there will be a delay (called latency -usually about a second) between the noise in the real world and the signal travelling throuhg your system.

ask again if you need help

also, sometimes in the software you have to engage the track's monitor icon - usually looks like a loudspeaker cone situated next to the tracks Read and Write automation, record enable, solo and mute functions

thought about one more thing - is your mic active or passive? if it is passive you won't get a signal - you will need to interface the mic and the computer through a pre-amp