Okay, so I got the damn thing working correctly again.

The problem was one of using ALKIT (an Alesis Fusion 6hd) in the studio rig as the main keyboard instead of the K61P or TRIVA (who was always a secondary anyways.) Alkit had never been connected to a computer before in his life. And though Triva didn't give any complications getting connected up and doing what I expected, that was pure luck -- Alkit wasn't so cooperative.

The symptom was hitting any keys on the keyboard and playing a softsynth would generate the notes commanded, but about 9 seconds after you played them.

Since much money and effort goes into creating Low Latency sound generation for the studio, having a mystery buffer causing delays 900X what you SHOULD be having was intolerable. It took a lot of trial and error and lots of good old fashioned sluething to figure it out. And those of you who are thinking of hooking up a more powerful synth to your computer through a midi interface, take note -- this can bite you too.

The issue was that the workstation was constantly outputting the Midi Clock. All the time. And apparently this was causing so much traffic that the data going to the soft synths was being filled with useless time data. I guess at some point I'd filled whatever buffer existed for the midi interface. At any rate, turning off the feature on the Fusion to output the midi clock eliminated the bug. And now notes play when I play them, instead of waiting around for the next ice age.

I feel less old now, since that was a problem NOBODY has encountered before. I'm the first to find the glitch -- lucky me. And I did fix it. Took a little while, but I did make it work.