James,
to ease with qjackctl usage, maybe you can setup 3 presets, one for each
of your scenarios with the following settings:
Preset Name Interface Input Device Output Device
---------------- --------- ------------ -------------
Away_from_Studio hw:0 (default) (default)
Need_Quality_Mic hw:1 (default) (default)
Need_Quad_Output (default) hw:1 ft4
if you suspect jackdbus is messing with above settings, try for instance
to disable the d-bus interface from the qjackctl setup misc tab. that will
let you try with plain jackd (no dbus) after restarting qjackctl
cheers
--
rncbc aka. Rui Nuno Capela