repeater digital out and a mixer problem

["diatom drone" <skincage@infin8ty.com>]

anyone used this to record a wav file yet? i'm quite new to s/pdif and i'd
like to see if i can get a cleaner recording than going through my mixer,
which seems to be doing something screwy. i'm currently using a sound
blaster live (i know, i know) until i can swing an upgrade. anyone know how
to get the sb to "listen" to the digital out using, say, sound forge?
there's not a lot about it in the manual (but in fairness it's not a 
primary
feature)or else i wouldn't bug.

oh yeah, the screwy mixer thing:

i like to improvise with a few things feeding the mixer and record the
stereo output to a .wav file which later gets cut up for loops. sometimes,
often enough to bother me, the right channel ends up louder when it
shouldn't be. i checked to make sure everything that might cause that was
accounted for, but i can't find any overlooked goofs on my part. faders,
trimmers, etc are all where they should be. i'm not sure if it's the card 
or
my mixer. i sure hope it's the card!

the experiment:

i recorded the exact same sound onto two tracks on the repeater, leaving
both tracks centered. so, the same signal should be on both channels, 
right?
i routed the repeater's outputs to a pair of mono channels, each with
identical fader/trimmer/eq settings. the wav file had the same problem.

so, i don't think the repeater's the culprit at all, as it's happened 
before
today. i've occasionally had cases where a stereo effect only seems to come
in strong on one channel (with some pitch shift patches on a kaoss pad for
example). so, maybe it's just the way i'm doing things? any guidance would
be appreciated, i'm still sorta new to using hardware to get what i want.

thanks!

Jon