In my musings, I bought a video input device that by its nature also has audio (stereo) inputs (the video was baseband NTSC/PAL). I was wondering if one could configure one of these devices to be an 'audio only' and be used with ALSA?

I understand that there might be a conflict with which set of drivers (V4L, or ALSA) latches onto the device, but I could control that thru some configuration file. I just need a "cheap" stereo audio input device for my laptop, and since I already have the video unit, and it HAS audio inputs, I thought it might work. The capture device is USB if that matters.

Am I dreaming about this being able to work? Is the audio samples that are generated by such a device other than 16bit PCM? Has anyone done such a thing (I don't see it mentioned much)? Any other thoughts?

Thanks.