i shouldn't be surprised. it's the most time consuming outcome possible.

sending each file out individually and recreating the project allowed me to create a file that nulled with the initial render. further, every one of the files nulled with their targets. so, i can create a clean sweep through rendering the files into a new project. meaning, this new project that nulls with the old render is a clean project and the project files are all warped, somehow.

the good news is that means the issue is now solved. i just have to spend the next four or five days doing this.

in some sense it's just...i don't care...fix it...

in another sense, it would be nice if there's just a little checkmark somewhere i can fix. how did i end up with 15 corrupt cubase projects at the same time?

thinking back, i may have done a copy/paste. i can't remember. i'm not going to remember that kind of trivial detail. and, while i sometimes see those "cubase has crashed, save under a different name" boxes, it's generally with midi - and that's not an issue here.

the fact that the different projects are rendering the same files differently indicates that there's either something corrupt that i can't fix or there's a project-specific setting i can switch. best start is to compare the project settings.