DV Info Net - FCP 44.1 vs 48 help

Man . . . i don't know what is going on with my Final Cut Project but . . .

Working in a ProRes422 timeline, 4 tracks of aif 48k/16bit

audio playback in the timeline is acting really strange:
hit play, audio plays back slow (as if settings are 44.1 but they are 48k)
stop, hit play . . . audio plays back fine.
stop, hit play . . . audio plays back 48 in left channel, nothing in right, then 2-3 seconds down the timeline, right channel kicks in with slow 44.1 audio.

If i start / stop, playing brief portions, the audio cycles from left to right at normal speed; let it play and the slow playback kicks in on the unused channel.

I've never seen anything like this quirkiness before.
Deleted prefs and restart, same.

It all started when i had to revisit a different project incorporating a 44.1k wav file.
I had really bad issues with that one too. I converted the file to 48k aiff and still encountered strange behavior.

Also getting a warning that i've never seen before:
"the current audio device does not support the number of outputs set in the Sequence Settings Audio out puts Tab. Unsupported outputs will not be heard . . . "

Any Ideas?