yeah, this driver conflict is persistent. and, to be entirely honest, i don't really have the will to resolve it - i just want it to be stable so i can get back to actually making stuff.

hopefully the following plan is workable. i'll have to test it...

1) restrict the wdm to the m-audio card. that is, do not install the wdm drivers for the alesis device.
2) only use asio to interact with the alesis device.

i think that this will avoid conflicts. and, if i can determine that the outs are essentially interchangeable, it won't matter much.

after i've tested this a bit, i'm also going to see if i can find an asio media player. foobar ought to work, but i can't find an xp-period component.

both devices can connect over asio. i don't think there's a conflict over asio, it seems to be specifically in the kmixer. but i guess we'll see.