Ah, a couple of responses while running an errand! Here goes:
Francesco:
i run aeolus through jack. i attempted to run it through alsa, but was told that aeolus could not connect to alsa. This happened when setting the sample rate to both 44100 and 48000.
It turns out that stops is installed, though it is the version that came with the distro. it just never occurred to me that stops and aeolus would be installed as separate programs. Could it be that the newer compiled version is butting heads with this?
David:
The architecture is 64bit. My apologies for not mentioning that. My projects are not quite in order enough for me to upgrade to 18.04, though it was my plan to do so in the next few weeks.
That's what i was thinking: The path to definitions is not clearly defined. i've never learned the format for setting those paths. i've half a head to uninstall stops and recompile the newer version to see if that solves anything. Given the morning's plans, though, i'm a few hours away from that....
Thank you, Francesco and David, for your responses.