This has got to be one of the most informative and helpful posts I've ever made and had replies too. Thanks everyone for all the insights, truly helpful and I have been definitely benefitting from all the comments.
One thing I had fun experimenting with is running the output of my Hydrasynth to one track in Ableton, then using the headphone output, I ran that through my Intellijel buffered mult...each output was an input into one of the four CVilization inputs and then each channel on the CVilization had two steps activated...so channel 1 had steps 1 and 5, channel 2 had 2 and 6, etc...each output runs to a different channel on my Cosmix....it created this really cool choppy/wavey sound that I sent to a separate track in Ableton....when I play the two together, it gave some really cool/interesting results. Further fun by switching on/off different channels on the Cosmix.
@farkas and @Garfield Modular - great tips, thank you very much, I'm getting a much better feel for using the envelopes with everything.
JB