Probably a stupidly obvious answer to this, but, I'm just curious to know which of these uses more CPU when producing music...

Audio track - with plugins like EQ, Compression n Reverb/Delays
or
Software Instrument track - I know it depends on the instrument itself but lets say for instance a Native Instrument plugin like Massive, FM8 or Sylenth, also with EQ, Compression n Reverb/Delay plugins on it.

Just wondering as I tend to be bouncing all of the parts I sequence n process as MIDI tracks down into Audio files.

I think usually the software(midi) tracks. of course it depends on what u use. for me sylenth1 runs almost as softly as an audio track, but gladiator or massive just runs the cpu up to 50-60%.

Cool, yeah I suspected that, definitely prefer the editing possibilities for audio rather than midi