Interesting. The engineer has been responding to me on the VSL forum so i will try to continue conversing with him and send him some screen shots, maybe I'll try to make a video if I have to, but I have never done a screen record video before so not sure how. I never really noticed this until VEP7, its possible it was always doing that before on VEP6 as well and I only noticed it now. I specifically noticed after I got an an update for VIPro that enabled the articulation viewer thing to show up in the channel strips. Not that that means anything, because i only noticed it doesn't mean it wasn't happening before. But in any case 10-20% hit just for displaying some meter activity and the articulation names is really heavy handed, I hope they get to the bottom of it.
Here are screenshots playing the same project from DP->VEP7 at the same point on the timeline approximately... one when VEP window is showing and one when its minimized or hidden off to a hidden virtual desktop.....