"Listen to this Device" Backwards?

audacity

Sorry to add to the confusion here but I have found posts all over the place regarding issues with x-fi and win 7. Most of them seem to revolve around volume control, mute, unmute. An example: Using an audio production app, attempting to apply real-time effects to an audio track. I've spent the last three days in every single audio application I could find (Acid, Ableton, fruity loops, soundforge, audition (cool edit)...etc.) and in each application the problem presents itself a little differently. In acid I am unable to hear any mic input at all. In ableton I can apply a vst (drumagog) to the mic and hear its output but I also hear the mic input audio. If I go into windows vol controls, ie., recording devices, I can see that the microphone's "listen to this device" box is NOT checked, yet I hear the mic through my speakers.
The idea with drumagog is that I want to pipe live mic input through it and have it output drum sounds in place of the sounds it hears through the mic. (see "invisible drum set, drumagog" on You-tube)
If I go and tick the "listen to this device"(LttD, lets call it.) box, then the mic plays through the speakers louder. Unticked, and it still plays but not as loudly. so... there's problem #1

#1 unticking the LttD box does not really work.

I press on for a workaround... I decide to go into "playback devices", "Speakers", "properties", "levels", "Microphone" and mute the mic for playback. Hey! I don't hear the raw mic anymore! BUT the audio application can no longer hear the mic either so there's no output from drumagog. A quick check of the "Recording devices" from the windows volume tab shows that the mic levels are responding to input (graphically) and that the microphone is not muted for recording. So we've discovered problem #2: At some point in the bizarre and convoluted hierarchy (or lack thereof) of sound mixers and controls and tools and crap the system is interpreting the "mute-ON" state in the playback devices section as a global "mute-ON" for audio applications.
To make matters worse, they have to include some moronic imaginary device called "What U Hear" in the windows stack. Which, if enabled, can actually reverse some of the other results of mute settings on other ports or devices, and it causes my Mic and Mic2 to be indistinguishable from one another by the system. I'll mute the mic, the other automatically unmutes, and vice versa... yet both channels are picking up input from the same microphone, and it's all audible despite the un-ticked LttDs.

Why in the world can't an audio application completely bypass windows volume controls and take total control?

Why in the world does creative include a mixer if the windows mixer cant be bypassed? If I use an audio production app, that's THREE mixers running simultaneously. If, within that app, I use any VST effects or instruments, THEY often have THEIR OWN mixers as well for gods sake. Inputs, outputs, auxilliary, mics, playback or recording, enable this and disable that. Man if Creative OR Microsoft had an office building in my town I would have already shoved a sound card or a copy of windows 7, respectively, up someone's golf-playing, lunch-happy-hour-having, accomplishment-challenged slacker ASS.

If someone could just use their programming skills to get the whole fist all the way up there and bypass everything and then use ONE "grand-unification/everything" mixer, with tick boxes that work, and no retro-re-deactivating options.... that'd be swell.

I gotta go punch the wall for a while.

BTW ...sorry for bumping this out of the dusty back room... but...grr.
this smiley is the closest thing to how I feel. Like the moon is the closest things to mars. There aren't any smilies with giant 5 headed demons throwing screaming Creative/MS executives into brick walls.

lol my new best friend. thanks for diving into this problem head on. I believe it answers my questions since i am using the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.