Thank you so much!!! I realize this was a newb question, so I do really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts! Very helpful, particularly because it can be daunting with so many options as a newcommer! Also sorry about the link - I didn't realize it'd break but I've been going a tad crazy with building various options - being a bit all over the map if I'm honest. The one I've been messing with the most if this one which, yeah, I went a tad nuts on (for trying to keep it somewhat simple anyway):
That includes delay and reverb also as well as 2 VCOs and VCAs and, to your point, still has a few tiny modules. The bare minimum goal is still getting an SSM2044 filter to start but the above is one route I was thinking of going. I also pondered what a Eurorack sort of channel strip might look like. Echo and Reverb can be done in my DAW too though I do tend to prefer offboard when I can (I have a Memory Man and find it's often, but not always, preferable to the options I have in Ableton and Renoise). But I also have been realizing, that does make for a mixing/mastering nightmare if there's just too much going on all at once on a channel.
Anyways back to the 2044's, good point about the differences in the chips being a benefit - I had pondered this as well and why I opted to mess around with the above setup as a concept. It just seems like it might require more utilities to do that, but yeah also gives me more options (particularly with the MBSID again since the real SIDs themselves aren't particularly well matched, and that is a good thing). I was indeed thinking of an LFO and a mixer so I can mix between MIDI CV, an env, and the LFO to modulate the cutoff. And perhaps ressonance and, if I opt to get them, modulating the echo rate and such. Multiple LFOs isn't something I was thinking about though, as well as VCAs if just doing effects and it sounds like I'm missing something there? I know the saying goes "you can't have too many VCAs" but I don't yet know quite why - at least for an effect-centric solution? I feel like I'm missing something important here, though I do see that Intelligel 4x VCA can work as a sort of mixer - that's neat!
I'm glad to hear about the MIDI bit as I spent time today looking at this very thing. I think I'm leaning towards the Mutant Brain as a good place to start. The Poly 2 caught my eye too (and like the fact they released a full on hardware tracker - I