Some of your issues are common new learning curve type items.
However when I read
Quote:
Thought I had it pretty licked until I choose: Merge Audio and VST..to stereo trackto mx down. Now listening to the output WAV file, the reverb vst doesn't seem to activate until some random time into the song. OMG.

Choosing the "Merge Audio... to WMA file" This WORKS. Why, I don't know. But now I'm stuck with a WMA file not mp3.

That threw me off.
Try using 'Track - Consolidate audio region' feature. Make sure you have the whole track selected beforehand. This sometimes helps with weird things like this because it rewrites where the beginning of the audio is, and gently forces some 'rogue' plugins to behave more as expected in this regard.
Use Save As to save the file and then try using the Merge function (to audio) again.

Last edited by rharv; 11/25/13 07:14 PM.

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