Spoke too soon...

Of course, my problems couldn't be solved that easily. Turns out the EnergyXT work-around only works before it is registered. So fixing the project file became a fairly high priority. Luckily, overwriting every previous instance of amplitube and deleting a few unused project tracks seems to have knocked some sort of sense into it.

EnergyXT, although it didn't solve my problem, is pretty damn cool. A lot of pro-guitarists use signal-splitting weirdnesses and guitar doubling to get the sound they want on their records. If you know what you're doing, it's actually pretty easy to simulate that sort of wiring in EnergyXT and get the same effect with a lot less pain than cranking around in Cubase would take. On the other hand, the Cubase built-in effects aren't available, which highlights my need for a good set of third-party effects. That powercore looks nicer by the minute...

All of which, in total, means that I have spent over a week now worrying about technology rather than music. Not a good feeling, all in.