I'm not so sure about the Karel. I created a test project today that used my orchestral template. Mainliy I tested HS that is on a slave PC. When using the Input Event plugin I would get occasional spikes in one audio thread. When using the old method of one instance per track it ran like a dream. I keep the audio streams low so it doesn't bog down the network. I just though it was strange that I had worse performance and I doubt it was from the i/o plugin keeping things live as all the work was being done on the slave PC.
I wish there was a way to detect what was causing the spike as my CPU meters (not in Logic) never jumped like Logic's did.
Chris