Working USB soundcard?

Hi - has anyone managed to get a USB soundcard/adapter working on a stock Linpus A1? Please let me know the details of the hardware and what you needed to do to get it working (and working with what programs). If you got it working on another Linux OS please say.

So far I got Audacity installed (via yum, the add/remove desktop app couldn't install it) which is working, hmm, 'ok' with OSS.
There is a lot of ticking and dropouts when using ALSA. There is an awful amount of noise on the input when the 'capture' faders are any higher than around 30% (worse when the mic boost is on), which is too low a gain to be useful.

I found I could connect my desk output to the A1 mic input (faders set low and boost off) without overdriving it, though this defeats the object of having a portable sound recording device. To get a (barely) reasonable SNR it needed to be pumping quite a bit, so a simple mic preamp wouldn't cut it. I wasn't expecting to do any serious recording with the onboard sound but it would have been nice for it to be a bit better than useless.

Cheers

Andy