Hmm so I may have taken a bit of a pivot. I'm about to say the B word :) But this got long, so the I'll put the TLDR at the top. There's some hate for Behringer ("Bearinjure", after all) some definitely justified, some not. But the Neutron. That thing looks pretty cool as a way to get into all this since I could use it with a Eurorack (though I read here about how much that actually costs in HP and will likely not put it in a Eurorack case). So what are folks' thoughts about it here? I dug around and it seemed it's fairly well received despite being from that one company.
The long bit that's unnecessary but is an update to my Eurorack thoughts:
Originally when the Neutron came out I had written it off - I don't know why. But after going pretty crazy with figuring out where I want to go with the rack, I noticed the Neutron has a lot of compelling things built-in that I was trying to sort through (like ENVs, VCAs, VCOs, etc.) while balancing my SSM2044 and effect ideas.
I still definitely want to do all that - particularly because having stereo VCFs seems compelling, at least for the MBSID as it produces some stereo effects (due to not perfectly matched SIDs and things, which I find useful) and some of the other stereo effects (like Black Hole) seem quite useful. But I ended up going maybe a tad off the rails :) Mostly trying to figure out where I want to go beyond the 2044's and ended up with this:
https://www.modulargrid.net/e/racks/image/1710868.jpg
Of note I tried to avoid the B 100 modules but I was having some trouble finding things in a form factor I liked at least for something more "conventional". On that note, notice there is no Maths here - I don't think I'm ready for that :) though my band mate seemed to really enjoy the concept when I showed him what it was. I am excited, oddly, about Plaits and similar modules though, which kinda surprised me as I've been on a big analog kick the last few years, but Plaits can do interesting things I don't think I can do with my existing hardware synths, along with all the modulation possibilities. I also liked Erica Synths' PICO VCO since it could double as an LFO and I was finding I kept wanting to mix LFOs into things while playing around with patches.
Anyways while doing all that, I rediscovered Neutron. And now that I kinda have a clue about how all this stuff works, it looks compelling. It has a lot of the things I was trying to put together (filter, BBD, distortion) to use for the SID and other things but has some pretty crazy VCOs with it and could be a base to work from when I build the actual EuroRack as it has a lot of the base modules I would need and would let me be a bit more incremental. Only downside is lack of a stereo filter but this could give me a good taste of how well I'll get along with routing my MBSID (or other things) through an external filter. The Neutron does have a filter that seems like it could fit the SIDs' already gritty sound too. The MIDI support seems a bit lacking but a gate and using the assign to the modwheel or some such can let me trigger the filter and do some programmatic modulation along with clock sync. Not nearly as complete as Mutant Brain (that thing seems sooooo darn flexible) but I think enough to get me what I want. I kinda wonder what the Prophet '08 might sound like through that crazy filter too!