I don't believe the hardware is an important issue but I am using the
roxio USB capture card. It is recognized and shows up in the GUI sound
application. I did get it working by using "default" in the audio
window of vlc. I assume that there is no hardware encoding as the sound
is now interrupted. I guess that my machine is to slow to capture at
the given sample rate. I have played with the priority settings giving
the sound applications the highest priority.

If anyone knows how I can use this card and use my slower system I would
love to know about it.