i need to crash, but at least the driver reinstall got it back to sounding right. like, pristinely right - as good as last night and this morning. that seems to indicate that fixing the phones at least got me to a situation where the driver breaks are reversible. and it really isolates it to the clock.

my guess is that launching cubase is telling it to count differently somehow. what happens is that a code 19 shows up in the device manager. i expect the drivers to break again when i launch cubase, and i'll have to try a few things, then probably reinstall the drivers again. i'm just not sure if i want the clock drivers or not. i mean, it sounds ideal without anything trying to launch them. but, i need to see what happens by installing the clock, first.

i've already been over this, but the changes i made had side effects so i'm kind of back at square one. again: knowing that getting back to a clean signal seems to be reversible is kind of key.