Jane, I've used programs that record directly to MP3 and all of them, in my opinion, do a poor job soundwise. The fact is that they're all really recording a WAVE file as a temporary file and converting to MP3 on the fly. The main problem with this is that it's very resource intensive and tends to leave clicks, pops and dropouts. My solution has been to record to WAVE, then encode to MP3 as a separate operation. Then, when I've gotten a satisfactory MP3 file, I delete the WAVE file.

There are a number of free WAVE recorders available, although I use a shareware program called Total Recorder for all my recording. (cost of registration is $11.95 US). I use a program called Simple MP3 for encoding. It's free, and works well.

As Clinton stated above, using the line-in on your sound card will give the best results for recording a WAVE file. Simple MP3 is found here:

Simple

and Total Recorder here:

Total Recorder

As I said above, you can also find a free recording program that'll do the job just as well. I actually bought Total Recorder for recording streaming audio and just use it for everything else because it's there.