As I writ this, my latest test cast has been up for over 19 hours straight with nary a dropped frame or an involuntary cessation of the cast. Even better, the lag started out at around 12 seconds and now stands at around 15 seconds. An increasing latency is an indication that their were pauses sometime during the cast. A constant lag tends to indicate the opposite.
So, what was the problem? you might ask. The change I made that appears to have made a difference is in the xml file that contains all of FMLE's settings. I discovered that file contains parameters that are not accessible through FME's GUI. Specifically, I found a setting for an AUDIO frame rate as distinct from the video frame rate. The latter can be set from the GUI, the former cannot. I noticed that the frame rates were different. Video was set to 20, audio was set to 15. Why there is an audio frame rate, I do not know. "Maybe those numbers should be the same?" I thought, so I put video back down to 15. That seems to have done the trick. Something simple, arcane, and essentially invisible. Jeez, did I spend a lot of time tracking this down.
I'm not 100% ready to declare victory since I've done so prematurely a few times already. Actually, I think I had several problems going on at one time or another. I DO think the LanOptimizer process was interfering with my upstream throughput. I DO think there were some ISP problems last Monday night. I DO think there are some unresolved OBS issues that I'll still need to resolve if I want to use that software. And of course, I really did fry my netbook AC adapter. I should be receiving the replacement for that today. Nonethless, I am definitely encouraged by the events of the last 24 hours. I'll continue to run some tests, including with the mic again. Hopefully, everything will be ready to go for next week's show.
Again, thanks to everyone for your patience. And thanks to Dylan for doing some troubleshooting on my behalf earlier this week.