i used my FF 400 to record from vinyl records with a Dell M60 Precision laptop and the quality was always perfect. then, at some point after a formatting, Windos XP reinstalation and some hardware changes, my recordings had a very bad quality: i got periodical glitches, clicks, pops and distorted signal. i tried a lot of remedies, during a couple of weeks, but nothing worked. then, i read somewhere in this forum about PCI card interference and conflicts with the FF 400 and i suddently remembered that i had added a wireless network card to my laptop (which is a PCI card in mini size). i removed this card and everything returned back to normal. so, be aware when you have similar persisting problems, a pci card might be the source of your problem.