[Sniderhouse]

When I calibrated the soundcard with the loopback, the levels were all fine and I did not see the same peaking on the input that I'm seeing now. So I think I can safely rule out the soundcard. That leaves the Galaxy and the cable. The Galaxy is brand new but the cable is, well, crappy. Signal fidelity and integrity, be it of a musical or instrumental nature, needs to be maintained, eh? I'll swapt that out with one of my "good" cables and see if that cleans things up. If that isn't it, then it must be the Galaxy. I have a RS SPL meter I can fall back on to determine the failing part in this chain.

The sweep level you see was the end result of my continuous efforts to reduce clipping (as suggested by the clipping dialog box). When I replace the input cable tonight, I'll be sure to set everything back to "normal" before I run a Check Level and any measurements.

As for the Windows and SoundMax mixer settings, I muted all of the inputs save for "Line In" and muted all of the outputs save for "Wave". Though this on-board solution doesn't have much in the way of effects, it does have some sort of DTS processing, which I made sure was turned off.

Thank you for your suggestions, I hope to have better news to report tomorrow.

Michael