Thanks to both for the great info! Last bits I will ask(and if you can't answer, I will test and self-educate
). I am trying to get my hands on an iLok license for the Waves Platinum Ver. 5 installer that came with the package(sadly, the iLok itself was lost or stolen, and Waves put up a brick wall on support for TDM).
Last question re latency and buffer, I totally understand the issue with routing thru RTAS plugins(or mixing TDM and RTAS on a track) on audio tracks(and am okay with this limitation), but what happens if I want to use a handful of RTAS plugins, such as an RTAS reverb(on an AUX track with no other plugins in that chain), or an older version(RTAS) of Melodyne or AutoTune? With Dverb currently being the only TDM reverb, using my IK Classik Plate and Room is very desireable.
Great advice on the EQ plugin choices as I do have maybe 2 dozen EQ III instances going(half could be switched to the one-band version). I noticed(and was surprised by it) that I could use a buffer setting of 4096(which is not available on a native system at 48K) so I'll give that a try, too