mike_mccue
Hi Drew,
 Thanks for making your comment.

 
Wow, I think I just set a new record for amount of work and reply length per word in my comment! 
 

At this point I realize that my opinion about envelopes, as stated previously, was formed on much older DAW computers running early versions of Pro Audio and SONAR and that my observations of complex envelopes crippling a computer playback are very dated. I used to rescue my projects by pulling out nodes and cleaning up envelopes.
 
 Never the less, I think this test was very simplistic in that it was all just on volume envelopes rather than any type of control over a more complex process.
 
 I wonder what would happen if I started automating more than one parameter or used a parameter in a VST that messed with latency compensation?

 
Regardless of what you're automating, the automation is more or less just a multiplication factor on the target parameter, so the automation curve itself should matter mainly in terms of how often the target parameter needs to be updated, regardless of what that parameter is. But I can't see this as being a problem.
 
But if certain parameters in certain plugins don't automate very well, that's a somewhat different issue.