John just said >IF THE MACHINE IN QUESTION has an audio jack, it would usually be the appropriate place to connect from the earphone jack of an external player

You'll get distortion if the audio jack is designed to accept a microphone rather than 'line' input - which is the problem I have with my laptop.

Try Googling for "usb audio line-in"
This turned up some interesting devices - essentially some form of (cheap) soundcard with a USB cable to connect to the pc


chris :-)