Hi Peter,
I had problems with the Realtek chip for sampling rates below 900kHz -
sounds as if you had more luck and there is only one bad rate.
But I see an other problem regarding the FIR-filter inside the Realtek.
This low pass has a cut-off frequency around 1MHz but is not very steep.
The ADC runs internally with the XTAL clock. This can cause additional
noise from mirror images, if the e4000 doesn't filter restrictive enough.
So I usually work with 2MHz or 2.4MHz sampling rate.
Regards Stefan