USB Sound Cards and Lenny

[Martin McCormick]

	I would like to try one of those USB sound cards on a
Dell laptop running Vinux. The existing sound card does
everything it was supposed to do and does the Vinux Speakup
application just fine but I would like to be able to feed the
speech to headphones and play sound files through the USB card
to make it possible to play them to external speakers but not
make the other listeners hear the screen reader. One would hope
that the USB card might also have a line-in connector for
recording from a radio or other sound source.

	Do most USB sound cards work on such a system? I have
found RS-232 dongles that are useless under Linux but work with
Windows because of driver issues and others work just like a
native serial port on the mother board.

	If it works right, it should show up as a second sound
device under alsa, play the sound files and stimulate the
economy with its purchase. If not, it will get slightly warm to
the touch, stimulate the economy and do absolutely nothing else.
I would, of course,  prefer it to do actual useful work.

	Any ideas as to what to avoid or how to tell what might
work?

	Thank you.

Martin McCormick