Afaik, you cannot even engage Track Monitor for a track that has VST Connect as input, right?
And you shouldn’t, as the VST Connect Monitor plugin in the Control Room takes care of hearing the Performer stream without remote delay.
As such, yes, you may want to keep it that way. We are also making progress integrating track monitoring so that it works like a regular track input monitor and eliminates the VST Connect Monitor plugin altogether. In any case you are advised to use headphones (possibly requiring to move the VST Connect Monitor plugin to after the “Phones” channel in Control Room).
Do we need to turn off ASIO Guard globally in Studio Setup/VST Audio System or just disable ASIO Guard in the plugin Manager for the VST Connect 5 plugin?
You don’t need to switch ASIO Guard anymore, but it may improve operation nevertheless. It is recommended to switch it off globally, as VST Connect runs three plugins that co-operate. If your project has such a heavy load that ASIO Guard makes any sense, you may consider to create a mixdown and record with that, diabling other tracks or re-importing comp’d recordings to the ‘main’ project.
There is a new configuration setting called “mute on stop” that is not explained in the manual. How does this work?
It eliminates overlapping audio when stopping, residuals from the Performer stream when switching from playback/record (delayed) to stop (chat mode).