the sound is being run through a mixer that is connected to the input jack on my laptop so the computer's sound card is being used.

i followed the course you recommended and found that the driver was set to built-in-audio 1.

i switched it to built-in-audio 2 and it is working like a charm.

how can i know which driver to use? is that determined by the hardware? trial and error? i don't remember changing this.

thanks for your help as this was very frustrating.