well, ha, sure, i mean this is a 50-year old conversation. it happens to directly inform the topic here though, as i’ve experienced it.
you can of course level-shift or rectify audio or CV at any point in any system, so its never like a hard-and-fast division. its a design decision that optimizes some use cases at the expense of others. whether this is overall “better” or not has been discussed a lot and is kinda beside the point.
but here i’m just sayin, i’ve done many, many tours with a very small buchla system (like 2 panels) integrated directly into a pedal chain. like, the quad LPG/gate is literally a line level mixer. its handy for that! in a 2p case, the other module can give the mixer some control: preset, midi, envelope following+preamps, more bussing/routing, sequenced, arbitrary functions, or whatever you can do with 10v. it’s a thing.
also, i’m not advocating anyone buy 200e stuff (in fact, haha, please don’t) but it has inevitably shaped the way i personally approach the design of new stuff