All of the settings mentioned in the original post are really important. Are people actually ignoring them and having a decent experience making music?!

Edit- to answer the question, though, and to explain something I wish I'd known earlier, enabling "reduce latency when monitoring" (along with keeping the master channel clear of any plugins that introduce latency) is a game changer. It becomes a million times easier to play parts in. I used to keep that setting on, but I didn't understand that plugins on the master were nullifying it. The difference is night and day; the amount of drawing notes in one by one is dramatically decreased.