(removes mod hat, dons lover of small musical devices hat)
@strum, I understand your viewpoint, and how things are not meeting your criteria... but there are lots of market segments out there, different musicians, different needs.
lets remember, there are some great musicians producing great music with tools of much lower specs than axoloti , organelle or a.n.other ... its not the tools, its what they do with them.
thats not to say any of these meet your (or other musicians) requirements., e.g. Im sure many professional studios have exacting requirements, that mean they won't use these technologies.
But its probably fair to say, these products are not aimed at these markets.
as always, commercially there is a balancing act, which is where target market/price points become important...
you may be willing to pay (e.g.) $50 more for x,y,z... but how does that affect the rest of the target market? perhaps they are not. at which point its the manufacture (who takes the product/investment risk) who has to decide, what is IN and what is OUT.
Organelle - I also love, and actually regret that I dismissed it early on... (see my early comments in this thread)
although I recognised it then as a 'complete package', it wasn't until I got one, I really realised how important that was, and what it opened up.
Specs do not tell the whole story... with digital instruments, a lot is about the software that is run on them, you can write bad dsp algo at high sample rates/bit depths, and it will still alias/sound horrible.
similarly whilst I prefer an RTOS, if you are careful with non-RTOS they can still perform... which we already rely on for PC/Mac etc - but sure you have to be careful, and it depends on your needs.
as for Pure Data, again, Ive been relatively critical in other thread (search Pure Data), I do agree, I think generally the patching environment is not as good as Axoloti, and just has a more technical feel... (I think like Max is to say Reaktor).
also writing 'native objects' (aka externals) is no where near as easy as Axoloti.
however, there is no doubt its just as flexible as Axoloti, and has the benefit of 100's of externals that have been written for it... which cover just about everything
... also there is a reasonably large healthy community to help out.... and its cross platform, which aids patch development a lot.
overall i think PD is far from perfect, but like any tool, once you get to know it... its plenty powerful enough for the job. (and if your going to start doing powerful DSP, heavy lifting... your going to be writing it in C/C++, then the 'object wrapper' becomes largely irrelevant)
the other options are:
Bela... this might work for you, certainly its got an RTOS ( IF you are careful with software), and low latency.
however, the software/support etc, I personally don't think matches Axoloti. It gives lots of choices, but then leaves you to find the right route , perfect for low level guys (Ive got 3
) , but not so great for beginners.
I personally thing its target market is instrument makers.
(see other Bela thread in Lounge, and discuss further there)
rPI3 + PiSound... the rPI needs a sound card, and I like the PI Sound to give me that, in a compact format.
(there are other soundcards around though, e.g. hifi berry, but pi sound gives you gain controls and midi din)
but its using a RTOS, so for instrument making, latency might play a factor...
also, whilst theres a bit of a music making community with the rPI, its a bit sparse, so again, it tends to feel like your doing it on your... again, cool if your into low level stuff, but not so great if you just want to plug in, patch and make music.
(see other rPI thread in Lounge, and discuss further there)
other options are things like Mod DUO, OWL ... which Ive not had hands on experience with, but might be worth exploring.
as for other technologies, I suspect in this sub-$1000 range your going to find it hard to get what you want, perhaps look at the old Nord G2 , or Kyma ($$$$)
anyways, they all have their strengths/weaknesses... there markets... either with limited budgets, limited time, limited experience... I encourage/support them all, the more options out there, the more likely we will get better derivatives in the future.
anyway, I hope you find what your looking for.