Its things like pads as you said (anything with long release), reverb, in my case thick saw/supersaw type sounds that are the hogs. Then again the other variable is how many of those notes were pressed that need the release portion open simultaneously, yada yada. I too do not like bouncing down because at that point I can no longer manipulate the params that would inspire me to use a synth to begin with in real time.
IMO the onboard FX of the Virus help make each sound great, but they do use processing power so if you add them to the Virus, they are going to affect overall processing power just like they would if they were a plugin in a PC. To me the value of putting the FX on the synth is to keep them "as one" with the patch, so that when you load up the sound you get a consistent result without worrying whats on the mixer track. Maybe if you're going for a pure hardware environment you could go for an older Virus plus hardware FX rack, and keep your processing on the Virus. One nice thing I find about softsynths is that with good ones, you can often do things like lower the aliasing quality of signals to get better CPU usage (not sure how much flexibility most VA hardware gives you for that?).
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