USB audio device in Linux?

As a Linux noob I decided to set up Xubuntu as part of a dual-boot on an older desktop of mine. The onboard sound on this has been kind of crappy (although it at least does work) so I decided to use a USB "soundcard" as a solution for my headphones. This works fine in my Windows installation but I can't get any sound with any applications in my Xubuntu despite the fact that the device is detected (and I managed to get it to output some horrible screeching sound using a method I don't recall). Any advice would be appreciated

Google

should be a way similar to how you tell windows which sound device to output audio on.

man alsaconf

setup the sound card by googling the driver for you system

gnome-sound-properties

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