1. Tried different (shorter) Usb cable and port to no avail. Recording seemed to stop (i.e. meters dead, no further data written) at random times, partway thru different tracks, which I could record ok individually. Did the hot fix you discuss in your technet query make any difference? Did MS ever come back acknowledging it as a bug?
Strange, or maybe just fortunate, I had never encountered this issue before I started using VS - as I suggested, maybe TotalRecorder's drivers are doing much the same as ASIO4ALL, although I can't seem to use the latter in conjunction with VS from initial tries.
I eventually managed a recording after downloading ASIO4ALL (and disabling Totalrecorder's device drivers), although it felt a bit cludgy - I was on the point of throwing in the towel as I was getting pretty fed up hearing this album's second side for the umpteenth time!
2. Decided to stick recording WAV format at 48/16 - as you say, I'd be pushed to tell the difference so I'm best sticking at the best the PP4 delivers.
3. I'll have a play around with filters, I was just wondering if there was a 'unbrighten' preset already

I also seemed initially to end up with very muffled, heavy bass output files, not knowingly have applied any filter apart from declicking and normalising the recordings. After a few, more disciplined application of the software, undoing corrections etc first, I eventually ended up with clean output. Any idea why I might have ended up with very bass heavy output - does the order of removing clicks, normalisation etc - or indeed doing them multiple times if you weren't sure you'd done it already - matter? On that front, it would be useful to have an option just to save particular tracks so the output could be checked before having had to convert the whole album.
Thanks