external real-time MIDI processing tool (yours included) that grabs my MIDI ports by the gonads. They're a pain to set up (since they must be loaded separately from the project), and getting them all to play nicely together (or figuring how to string them together) is nothing short of a nightmare.
Hate to be called irrational! Every thing extra on a busy system adds to extra start-up, clean-up, configure, and shut down time. I never 'play' live, so driving things with a joystick or a conveniently placed key doesn't offer anything to me. One may see what's possible with a tool and then decide if that is what is worth having -- for instance, the legato mode decisions made in preparing the VSL Horizons solo strings are very creative, if a little weird -- but it is easy enough to duplicate in midi: (play a keyswitch corresponding to the number of half steps up or down in the legato interval near the end of the first note followed by the next note transposed 4 octaves if it's a down-direction interval else the regular note.
You may say, why would you add three notes to the midi stream instead of one? But I say, I'm already modifying the 'environment' in the midi stream note by note, it's not hard to add two notes while I'm tweaking attacks, velocity, sometimes vibrato rate or depth, and patch choice. And when it's all done, it is fixed, repeatable, cut-and-pastable sometimes, and always interpretable, not mysterious.
