Aggregates, Sample Rates, and Standalone Prefs, oh my!

Hello Cyclers.

So, I am knee deep in a patch/standalone and just running into a few snags. I have tried some solutions that nearly work, but am wondering if there might be a more direct or efficient answer to these.

1) I am using an aggregate device from audio midi setup to combine physical audio interfaces with soundflower (both 2ch and 16ch). This all works great, once setup, but as many previous threads have discussed, things often get out of whack with sample rates. If one program changes the sample rate of a device, they will disappear from the aggregate's i/o. Manually changing the offending sample rate in AMS will solve this. However, the standalone is ideally going to end-users other than myself, and it would be great to be able to access AMS function within Max...specifically, can I somehow change the sample rate settings from commands within Max? Audio MIDI Setup is not applescriptable, so that is out. Does this seem possible with either shell scripting or an external that is running true coreaudio functions?

2) Regarding the standlone, is it possible to build a standalone that doesn't create preferences files to restore state on startup? I can use pattr to change settings to something on open, but sometimes when first starting max, I will again get brief sample rate changes or device setting selections and I can dig into the pref file and see where these have been set in the text file. Just wondering about overriding this feature.

So, overall, these are issues that I am able to fix in a clunky manner myself, but with a standalone that is going into the hands of others, and potentially folks who are not especially computer savvy, I am hoping to simplify any of these workarounds. Thanks for any pointers, head starts, or outright solutions.

General specs:
Max 5.1.9
Intel Mac, OS 10.6.8
Soundflower 1.5.2

-chris