Thanks Ronin. I really wanted to like the Grandmother when it came out because of the price point and patchability. Some demos sounded pretty good, but when I got a chance to tinker with one here locally, I just didn't care for it. Some of it was very specific things, like the filter behaves very different than other ladder filters and it was harder to find the sweet spots in it, but mostly just didn't care for the rawer sound. I prefer the Sub Phatty / Sub 37 smoothness, even if darker and more subdued. The M32 is its own thing but closer to the Sub line than anything, to my ears. Presets are nice, polyphony not an expectation for me. If the CV equipped version of the Sub 37 is within my reach that might be the best bet.
You raise an interesting point about line level. Clouds has a gain input so you can adjust incoming audio; I suppose I can see how far that will get me first though.