My friend is using his laptop for backing tracks for guitar and it gives him alot of hum and fan noise.

He is using the laptop 1/8 out to the rca tape ins of a Yamaha powered mixer. But even if he goes 1/4" and goes through a channel he still gets alot of noise.

I use a gigaport in out usb sound card but he doesn't want to spend alot of money.

So I was wondering if any of you here want to share your secret of getting a decent signal using the laptop outputs.