IMO with hardware you donāt have 2000-3000 modules to choose from (unless you are mega rich), this means you can really get to know your synths or modules much better, being confined means you learn your environment warts and all! VCV feels like Netflix an incredible, amazing new way of working, kind of spoilt, a choice and possibility overload.
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I find the stoermelder MB module really useful to help organise modules and sort by most used and create favourites.
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Totally agree with all of that, including your opinion of Les Pauls!*
- I wouldnāt say they suck, I just prefer the sound of single coil pickups and have always played strats.
Iām sure itās been mentioned before, but the main practical issue (ignoring sonic ones, which the DSP-makers and folks who have been doing this for a while seem understand well), is that of creative constraint.
Any work of art (in any medium) is subject to the constraint of that media, and hardware/software impose a much different set of constraint. And just as weāre all products of our particular environments, the music produced under different constraints will be different.
Some people think that fewer constraints = better art, but I think the reality is a bit more nuanced. Choice is good, for example (and I think everyone would agree), but that doesnāt translate into more choice always being better.
Except when it is, of course. Like I said, I think itās nuanced. I that everyone making art needs to find the set of constraints that work best for them. Thatās up to them.
What I would suggest, though, to people who just assume that more options always leads to more art should consider playing around with a fixed rack for a bit. It could be eye opening.
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or just an acoustic guitar for 5 years like many of the oldsters amongst us started out with
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peavey forever
Hence the Goehte quote a bit earlier in the thread.
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I hope this isnāt too controversial a thought, but I think the real benefit of hardware lies in having controls with a fixed purpose and quality knobs/sliders. Iām strictly in-the-box, and MIDI 1.0 controller resolution is one of the major pain points for me. [0,127] is pretty rough for many parameters. Yes there are paired CC values, but if you read the standard closely, you assume an LSB of zero when setting the MSB. That can cause jumpy transitions. While you could make the MSB set pend on receiving the LSB, I think that would be against the standard. Pitchbend, I believe, is the only control that gets 14 bit values correct as the MSB and LSB are sent together rather than as separate CCs. Soft takeover of pot/slider values is a nasty bit of business in and of itself. Encoders generally have poor resolution. All this makes MIDI knobbery a not-so-much-fun experience.
These things are among of my motives for trying to come up with alternative controllers for my audio software. Encoding pots and joysticks isnāt that tough to do with cheap controllers sitting on fast USB serial, and Iāve had good luck doing this. Making a very high resolution encoder is another matter. I had the idea of using an optical mouse engine to read a textured shaft, but these sensors are pricier than Iād like and scarce as hens teeth.
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Well hopefully this will become a dead issue in the next few years when people start adopting the extra resolution that MIDI 2.0 gives to values and flood the market with all sorts of groovy high res MIDI 2.0 controllers. I just wish we lived there now.
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Letās all just buy new controllers. 
Iāll allude to John Steinbeck here: āmoney comes in two quantities: none and not enough.ā
My solution for pots and hall sensors is just to wire those to Arduinos and write a simple serial protocol (much simpler than any flavor of MIDI) to get it into the machine. That doesnāt solve the make-a-cheap-high-res-encoder issue.
You seem to be in a funny argumentative mood on here after that Amiga silliness. Iām not talking about Ā£1000 keyboards, the standard shouldnāt really mean too much extra expense for manufacturers so fully expecting what is an around Ā£100 controller with loads of faders and knobs that pumps out MIDI 1 be an around-Ā£100 controller with loads of faders and knobs that pumps out MIDI 2. Just not yet, unfortunately.
Iām also not factoring in a post-Brexit wheelbarrow full of pound notes to buy a loaf of bread hyperinflation scenario.
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Letās forget about that please. It was an argument about getting ātoldā on a matter of lived experience. That never goes well.
The point here is that I have music I want to play today, not when industry gets stuff to market. Also, my computers have multiple keyboards attached, so multiply the cost. Also, a quick gander at the net told me that the MKii was MIDI2.0 ready, not that it had a working implementation today.
I can wait. Iāve already got about a billion ways to make music that I could never have dreamed of as a kid. However deep into wishing for this and that it goes, I can still get off on a guitar, bass and drums if needs must.
Noted. For me, itās about getting good control of ITB instruments with the technology we have today. Look. You can pine for MIDI 2.0 or work around its not-yet-there status. The first is being part of the problem; the second is being part of the solution. Why wait if you donāt have to?
Because right now I donāt need such fine control over anything. I will embrace it when itās freely available but until then Iāll just dick about making music rather than tools to make music.
I guess my thing is that adjusting and augmenting an instrument to aid in ones musical vision is part of the game; think of Eddie Vās frankenstrat or Jacoās bass of doom. The programming and wiring really isnāt that hard with the exception of high-res encoders, and that boils down to some vendors making parts availability unduly difficult. If I can easily make things that help me make in-the-box instruments more expressive without waiting for industry to get the lead out on MIDI 2.0, I see no reason not to.
I do that with software, hardware tinkering really is not my thing as Iām kind of cursed. I thought Iād bleed the radiator in my kitchen yesterday and ended up nearly flooding the room. I canāt wait for lockdown to end so I can just get an expert round for things that need doing because as soon as I interpose myself something bad becomes something worse 
Yes, this. When peoplesā first instinct towards creative endeavors is to be and think outside of the boxā¦ NO. Give me that box, let me live inside of it, what a nice place it is! Let me explore every nook and cranny of what this box has to offer 
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you say that until you need to feel the stuff out of the box