i have now determined with no ambiguity that the channel mixer is saving incorrectly, and that i've basically found a bug in cubase. i've determined this by isolating it to the mixer settings by exporting and importing them separately.

but, the bug does not affect *every* eq setting. so, it's not an across the board problem.

i'm going to post to a few places and see if i can get a response. i can see no obvious solution, but i need to ask around.

i now need to back up and determine a few things:

1) did this bug always exist?
2) if so, can i find this bug in other projects?
3) why did this bug *not* affect the files from the beginning of july?

this is going to be a little time consuming. it means i'm going to have to go over everything i've done since mar, 2014 and reconstruct it all in ram, then see if it nulls with the saved versions and then see if it nulls with the final versions.

what i'm going to be looking for is patterns in the eqs. are there specific shapes that break during the save?

i'm at least confident that nothing is broken - except cubase itself. so, i'm confident that i can rebuild the machine and leave it that way.

once i've determined which projects - if any - are affected and which aren't, i will probably convert those files into sonar or reaper projects. and, in the end, the end result is likely a complete migration to a different daw.

while i still think that a processor error is the most reasonable thing i can come up with, neither disabling the dep nor turning off the multicore made any effect.

i've been testing old files and have yet to produce a similar error. remember: this doesn't happen with every eq decision. nor does there really appear to be a discernible pattern regarding which ones it happens with.

i've also experimented a little with saving mixer settings and it does not seem to affect the outcome, which suggests the error must be in the save process rather than the mixer. otherwise, i could wipe the mixer and reload. but that's not working.

if i can't determine a problem in any of the previous files, i'm left to conclude that there's something very strange with these specific files. i may have to temporarily move to sonar or reaper to finish this project.