Best DAW for Scratchpad/External MIDI Sync? – Hosts & Applications (Sequencers, DAWs, Audio Editors, etc.) Forum

I bought one of the Korg SQ-64 sequencers recently on clearance, and am trying to set up a quick scratchpad with three different VSTis that I could use to flesh out ideas. Ideally, I would like to use the Korg as the master, as I would like to control the transport and the tempo with the hardware. However, I can’t seem to get the transport in Reaper to start with a button press on the Korg, and using the hardware as the tempo master for Ableton, Bitwig and Kore 2 seems to cause significant CPU spikes.

Thus, I have three questions:

1) Is it normal for there to be CPU spikes when a DAW is controlled by external hardware?
2) Is it more efficient, CPU-wise, to have the DAW act as a master?
3) Which DAW is generally viewed as the best for syncing with external hardware?

Thanks in advance!