yeah to a large extent it is access to knobs - in the case of the veils it's a cascading quad vca - so in a lot of cases I use it as effectively a mixer that has vca on the inputs
but I was really being more generic (ie not just about vcas) - it seems a lot of people want to get more and more, smaller and smaller modules into the same space - I don't find small dense modules fun to use - and the few 2 hp modules that I have with knobs are always sandwiched between 2 larger modules with space around the edges near the knobs on the small modules, I even do the same with disting, as I find the knobs are difficult to get to with a lot of jacks/knobs around it
NP about links and kinks
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities