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