What are the limitations of the SE version that you folks have run across? I don't need any real time input/output to hardware with plugins but I was wondering whether the VST's I do have will be applied audibly in real time for monitoring purposes.
SE v8 (and I assume v9) will apply internal and VST plugins real-time for monitoring. As for limitations...if you do significant post-processing, SE's limitation of only 2 internal plugins + 2 DirectX/VST plugins per object may be an issue for you. I don't do much post-processing - don't have the time, knowledge / skills, monitoring environment, or desire to learn at the moment - so it's not a big deal to me. On the rare occasion I require more than the 2 internal + 2 DirectX/VST plugins, I apply the ones I want, export to 32bfp, then re-apply any additional ones I want to use. Not ideal, but I do it so rarely, it's not an issue for me.