Well, my old solution didn’t work this morning, so I followed Federiko’s solution from earlier in the thread and simply opened the project in 8.0.3, played a few bars (which had sound there) and exited without saving.
8.5 had sound after that in the project.
All this leads me to believe its not initializing the audio hardware properly. Playing with faders, automation, etc. is occasionally doing the same thing and gets everything working as well. But letting 8.0.3 initialize it works everytime.
**BTW, I noticed I only have this problem if I used a program (like Premiere Pro) that uses the ASIO drivers first. Even if I’ve closed it. Using Cubase 8.5 when its the only thing I’ve opened is fine.
Again this makes me think it’s not intializing the audio correctly.