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Streaming 8 Scanners On One Soundcard

After seeing a post about a soundcard with 4 line inputs I got to thinking about my own soundcards. What I realized is that most soundcards do have multiple line inputs, they are just burried within the system and need ports to the outside. So, out came the soldering iron.

I started with a SoundBlaster Live! card that I use in my system. Looking at this card will show you that it not only has an external line in on the card but also has inputs for TAD IN (telephone answering device), CD IN, and AUX IN.

I have quite a few of the CD to soundcard cables laying around that have the connectors I was looking for. I cut the cable in half and attached a 1/8" stereo jack to it. One thing to keep in mind is that the tip of the phone plugs are left (white or black) and the ring of the plug is right (red). You can use this to arrange your scanners on the stereo channels if you stream two scanners per input.

I then grabbed one of the many Option Retaining Bracket (ORB) covers that I have laying around. I drilled three holes in the ORB cover to mount the phone jacks.

After that is finished, attach the cables to the inputs and install the ORB cover. Hook your scanners to the new inputs and start streaming.

Notes:
I did find that although the input for the TAD IN is stereo, the soundcard driver limits it to mono and splits the audio across the two channels. This does limit the system to 7 inputs for this card/driver setup but may not for other soundcards.

If your not into making cables to split the right and left channels for your 1/8" plugs, look at Radio Shack's 2-In. Airline Headphone Adapter, Catalog #: 42-2495 which splits out the right and left channels to two mono jacks.