possible slow sound etc -

is it possible for blitzmax to sound bizarre on slower machines? ie as the loop slows down, because sound isn't in it's own thread?

No, the mixing is done in another thread, in windows it is in a callback that is run from the multimedia device's thread.

I'll use this opportunity to ask to have it's (the mixer thread) priority raised a bit ... again ;]

Please speak with your soundcard manufacturer then.

There must be something bottlenecking it then because I've never experienced such a thing as what I've rambled about in the past, in my years using this machine...

... except for midi files.