i put a cube around my scene and added a background image to the cube.. my s/s dropped to 90k.. but i'm getting nearly 3 million c/s.. i've found that the higher the c/s.. the faster the render clears up.. my brain is exhausted and i'm whupped physically too.  gonna crash for the night and let this thing bake.. i should have about 800 passes at nearly 3000+ efficiency by the time I wake up.. I normally would get a quarter to a third of that so it should look pretty nice.