As a follow-up, I ended up buying an H9000R.  I underestimated the current used value of my outboard effects processor collection, it more than paid for the H9000R.

I still do think that Eventide should come out with a Lite version though to attract more people to the platform.  The H9 was awesome but the 2016 Reverb was the box that opened my eyes to what Eventide processors were really capable of.  Without the gateway 2016 I wouldn’t have splurged on the H9000.