in one of the strangest demonstrations of surveillance yet, i'm listening to one of the remixes i spun off at the end of 2015 (http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.ca/2015/12/insp.html) and it starts actually interfering with the loopback at the low frequencies, due to the depth of the bass drum.
there are several mixes of this track that use the same drum pattern, so i check each of them, and they all do the same thing.
i was able to solve it on a reboot.
but, it seems like what i was hearing was the bass beating out of phase with itself as it was being captured by the monitoring software.
again: i actually don't care if i'm monitored. i'm boring as fuck.
but, i can't create music when the monitoring software is degrading my audio quality, like this...