wow; i was getting all kinds of noise from all kinds of places. yes, the sound font is noisy. i'm almost wondering if it's meant to emulate a mellotron, because it sounds like tape noise. but it's not at all the real core of the problem

i was actually getting a steady, but inaudible, hum coming from the cd player. muting everything except the midi out cleared up a ton of it - and, again, i do explicitly recall always doing that, back in the day. not something i've had to do recently. you don't really notice it in general, but it was badly exaggerating the hiss under certain high notes...

the eq on the card was weird, too; just turning it down a little cut a bit of the edge off.

so, i'm rerendering yet again. all of it. this is going to be the last render, though - it's silly to be neurotic about the midi mix, when it's the vst mix that is the final version.

what i really need to do is just get the 8 renders into cubase, and play with the eq from there, rather than try and remember what i did in cool edit 14 years ago....

i don't remember when i deleted the old render. i think it was like '08, and by accident. don't do that...