You have to route an input channel to an audio channel to be able to monitor it live so you might as well put the effects on the audio channel. (Unless you wanted to record that track with effects included)
Make sure direct monitoring is disabled in Devices\VST Audio System\Your soundcard - And click on the channel monitoring button (little speaker icon)
Of course you will be hearing the processed signal with any latency from your system so set your buffers as low as possible and avoid any plugins that introduce high latency (You can see how many samples of latency a plugin adds in the plugin information window