Hey justanoldmuso - hearing you ... thanks for the comments and good to hear you're still on the scene! Going to try the last of the suggestions from the PG guys tonight.

PC spec is just silly, Core i9, 64G Mem, 4 M.2 High end SSDs blah blah, silly spec. You could run NASA off this thing.

Sound card is Creative AE-9 Audigy - connected on PCI-E v2 slot which is more or less the same interface speeds of USB3.0 - so there's little advantage to an external unit - it's not used for recording, only for low latency output from the VST instruments with MIDI controllers etc.

I'm from a (distant) music studio production environment and my career is based entirely on complex computing technology, this stuff is second nature really - but a problem like this is just plain irritating for both the authors and myself.

Always appreciate additional input and glad the guys from PG are still responding, but the sad reality of it is ... WHAT WORKS ON ONE MACHINE MIGHT NOT WORK ON ANOTHER as you say ... :-)

P.