Composite bus output seems to have an unwanted channel in the mix?

[fadermix3]

I am using Voicemeeter to take the left channel of my mic and the left channel of a game's party chat and then combine them into a stereo pair on a virtual audio cable output for Nvidia Shadowplay to record as the "microphone" stereo channel. This allows Shadowplay to record the game audio clean, and also record the mic and game chat on different mono channels -- keeping everything independent.

I have been using this setup for multiple years. Last summer I upgraded my desktop hardware. When resetting voicemeeter, I thought everything was fine. But at some point in the last few months, it seems that the composite bus L mic channel started receiving the game/pc audio into it... but the game/pc audio is on it's own virtual audio cable and should not have anything to do with this composite bus routing. There must be something here that I have unknowingly skipped over.

I reloaded an old VM settings backup, made some renames and channel routing adjustments, and it works as expected once again. I didn't change anything with my mic or Windows sound playback settings. Meaning the issue is only in Voicemeeter's settings.

Visually, the controls seem to be the same. I don't understand what the difference is.

When comparing the working settings xml and the faulty setings xml, there appear to be a few differences, but I don't understand what these mean -- and of course what they would appear to be in the GUI. I wish to know so that I can note it in my written instructions, should this happen again and I have to manually reset eveything, should restoring a settings backup fail.

I have attached the xml's in a zip, as well as some pastebins.

- Fixed settings file: https://pastebin.com/4Zmadefk
- Faulty settings file: https://pastebin.com/jZu2m7Un