process explorer...

this is a tool i forgot about entirely, and it's kind of exactly what i needed the whole time. it might be able to help me figure out what's going on with the mixer settings not saving. for now, i loaded it up to try and tell me what's going on with the drivers.

the only thing that's running that's accessing anything sound related is foobar. i've got kmixer running in the system. nothing else.

but, there were three programs running under explorer (along with foobar) that may be screwing something up. the first is devldr32.exe. this is a file for the soundblaster that most people agree is useless, and may even be corporate spyware. it stands for "device loader" - relevant. i've taken it in and out of the script over the years and ultimately left it run because it seems to be benign. turning this off did not make a difference. i'm not completely convinced.

the second is the cubase dongle emulator. this might seem to be the most likely culprit, but if it is then it's somewhat of an irresolvable error - it's required to run cubase. but, i've never had this issue before. and, it doesn't seem to be accessing anything that ought to interfere with playback. nor did turning it off make a difference.

the third is a task-bar program for the m-audio card that functions as a replacement for sndvol32. there's no handles open to anything relevant. but, cutting this had an immediate - albeit extremely negative - effect on the audio output. it collapsed into am radio.

so, i noted as much and rebooted...

on reboot, it seemed to return to consistency - leading me to think that something may have been crossed and that crashing it may have fixed it.

it's too early to say for sure. but, it's clear that there at least *was* a conflict. i'll have to spend the rest of the day listening to see if it comes back, and if turning that program off altogether (it's not really required in any way) makes any difference.