USB Sound Card in Kubuntu

[Frank Brassil]

I want to digitize some old vinyl albums using my DELL 9300 Laptop running 
Kubuntu Dapper.

The internal sound card is, as best I can tell, mono not stereo, (Dell is 
rather reticent about detailed specifications sometimes) but it works 
tolerably well when I plug the turntable in with a suitable adaptor cable and 
using Audacity to record and edit.

This is good enough for spoken word, but not good enough for music. I would 
like a better quality stereo system. Having looked around, the best value 
seems to be a Creative Soundblaster Live External USB device. There is also a 
PCMCIA device from Creative, but it is much more expensive.

Does anyone have any experience in connecting and using a Creative USB Sound 
device both for playing audio and for digitising external audio?

Regards

Frank Brassil