Direct monitoring is a fail in general for a variety of reason. Buffer set to 128 or lower, monitor through DAW, everything is peachy and easy and you can use plugins while tracking
I always feel a sudden urge to stab myself in the eye with a fork when I have to use it. I'm sure it's simple as hell when you get used to it, but every few months when I sit in front of it and try to route something, I get some sort of problems.
I have no use for that totalmix nonsense, but I LOVE this thing. I can crank the buffer all the way down to 32 and have like 2ms of latency! even with a bunch of plugins running. this thing is crazy, can't believe I waited this long to upgrade.