Culprit found!
Ableton Live mutes vst2 plugins when audio drops below -100dbfs.
Who knew right?
There is a fix (sort of) I’ll post here later the link but it involves creating or editing ‘options.txt’ and placing a time value that delays the muting of low signals BUT does not stop this behaviour altogether.
Took a few years to discover this. Sorry for thinking it was Equivocate.
