@Bill said:
... You'd have to use Vienna Ensemble to host an instance of the player on each channel with the desire articulation loaded in each....
Your understanding is shortsided of multitimbral advantages and it is by no means a moot point to any degree. A virtual instrument without multitimbral capabilties within Vienna Ensemble requires the articulations to be spread across the channel strips in order to access them by MIDI channel, and the Event plugin doesn't help in this regard either (whereas on a multitimbral VI the Event plug is of tremendous value).
A multi-timbral instrument (e.g. PLAY, Kontakt, Omnisphere, etc.) is capable of not just loading 16 articulations within a single instance, but is capable of assigning each of those articulations a unique MIDI channel. This I see as of paramount importance in quickly assigning a selected note(s) in the score a desired articulation.