I wouldn't agree that the VSL engine is the leanest out there. I love all of my VSL products. Some of them take a bit of work to get over the hurdles of them being samples. Meaning, physical modeling is far superior but at the moment, we don't have that option. I am sure one day VSL will go this way (or whatever way ultimately becomes the most viable and easy to use). I do find most of the patches difficult to perfectly blend together when doing certain legato lines but the more I learn the easier it becomes to do so. I wouldn't say it's an issue with VSL as much as it's an issue of the technology (samples). And at least they give a crap load of things you can change to attempt to get exactly the sound you're looking for. It's a learning curve to me.
I am able to load incredible amounts of sounds in EXS24, Kontakt player etc but when it comes to loading VSL Samples in the Vienna player, the number is cut down exponentially. I don't know why that is to be honest but, it's consistent on all of my machines so it's not one machine based or a Windows/Macintosh thing. I think this has been discussed many times before but honestly I find myself spending to much time reading this stuff when I should be using my time with my samples making music and learning how to use the tool to make it happen. You hear the demos and see the results so it is in fact possible. It is a matter of learning what to do to get that sound. I have found that VSL will give me a patch for instance called "legato". Yet, for a specific legato passage I will find using samples that say nothing to do with "legato" work better. Trial and error and then some good documentation of your own and I am all set. I am just glad I have such amazing sounds to work with and not some sloppy looped fake crap recorded samples that have slow ugly wobbling vibrato and a hideous harshness to them. (will not mention any competitor names).
MIR I own and love but is another example of this CPU hog you mention. It requires so much power to run efficiently that the lights have to dim in my home to pull enough juice to power it :). The nice thing is, i7 processor technology is here to stay and be exceeded. Soon discussions on computers being to slow to run MIR will become obsolete. It's the price you pay to go with absolute cutting edge. I paid it and am happy. it's far better then any reverb solution I have ever worked with in my life. But that's another topic in itself.
I don't think VSL condones people for writing negative posts or things that could possibly be done better to help their business decisions (as customer recommendation should always be an influence in the decision process) but your tone isn't even constructive. It's combative and quite aggressive with a "bashing" quality behind it. You could have gotten your point across in a much more professional way but even so, the people who will listen to you and run the other way will be the 15 year old "mp3 generation" iPad users who will go spout what they read in your post to all their friends if VSL ever gets mentioned. After their moment of glory and ego filling brain puking about how much of an "expert" they are with VSL products, it will actually do two good things! The person they dumped all the BS on will actually go home and lookup who VSL is (woohoo one for the team!). Secondly, they will hear the demos and go back to school tomorrow and say to the 15 year old mp3 genius, "you're an idiot" and buy VSL products anyway.
Good day,
Maestro2be