One surprise I had was the importance of gain staging or boosting things. You could say, it is like going to see a rushing river in the springtime. The water needs to get to a greater body and when it surges through the course, the behaviour becomes rather interesting.
I posted a sample running @robertsyrett’s ‘g Strings’ through the Make Noise LXD, which was struck, then cv’d by the Pulp Logic Cyclic Skew module. The behaviour of the signal, depending on the power driving it, is a great example of the attraction to analog hardware.
When you look at the way that substances process energy in terms of their structure, you will see water crystallize (or boil), you will see rivers eddy, storms funnel, etc. This is a way for the various factors to resolve the change in circumstance by assembling a pattern that integrates these changes.
You could say that a common catalyst involved that makes the system reorganize, is a boost. The river is running faster, the air density may be much heavier, or the movie theatre candy counter becomes busy enough that everyone implicitly agrees to form a line.
Okay, enough metaphors. What is a boost?
I wish I had spare hp.