He unmuted.

“What the hell…” he muttered.

The log window flooded red: [ASIO 0.90.79] Critical stream corruption. Re-clocking via audio artifact injection.

“Almost,” he said. “Just recalibrating the ASIO.”

The driver’s interface unfurled on screen like a cryptic map: input gain sliders twitched on their own, the latency meter hovered at 4.7ms—just below the red line. A tiny log window scrolled:

"Come on, you stubborn bastard," he whispered, tapping the spacebar.

Then the USB cable wiggled.