Oh dear, I figured it out. My patch is so messy I forgot to connect everything to writesf~...a couple sound sources were buried under cables....grumble grumble...

Probably something simple and important I am missing.

Audio from DAC~ to earphones sounds great, no issues there.

Same audio is sent to writesf~ in order to make a wav file, or an aiff. (I've tried both.) open WAV file, in any other program, sounds quiet, no bass or mids...really just the higher frequencies....almost all information is lost. in any case, sounds nothing like what is coming straight from the DAC~.

what is going on?