Realized I missed this question but usually you need to be able to take a look at the MIDI Implementation for most of the hardware ones to see how to route stuff and not all of them have good options depending on what your controller can do.
I think the NuRAD probably has enough breath controller options for CC that it should find a way to work with most but you may be tweaking the setup on the NuRAD for your particular piece of hardware.
From what I’ve seen on the forums, the Novation Peak is pretty popular as well as the Arturia Microfreak and the Behringer Neutron. There’s also a bunch into the various Modal synths and a couple Hydrasynth users (like me). There’s lots of users with a wide variety of different sound modules though beyond the few that happen to be popular.
As far as wind controllers go, the main thing a bunch tend to rate hardware (and software) on is filter zippering as usually routing breath control to the low pass filter cutoff is the number one mod route (and some times the only one). Most synthesizers solve that with some form of interpolation and modulation smoothing but in some cases people want direct CV control of the filter because they feel it gives a better response. The EaganMatrix appears to give direct access to the interpolation controls so it can probably be tweaked for the desired response but in others it’s more hidden and less controllable.
I don’t seem to be one that picks up on filter zippering all that much so I can’t really advise on that aspect.
The Novation Peak tends to fit a lot of the checkmarks for breath control: filter cutoff has double precision internally (256 cutoff values), CC02 as a mod source, good interpolation/smoothing from MIDI, and CV Mod In for direct control. So it’s not surprising its quite popular in the wind synth community.
The main problem I find though with hardware is workflow and you need to find one that the interface and what it can do is enjoyable to tweak around on. You also would want one that isn’t a big deal getting basic breath control setup because outside of a few exceptions like the Anyma sound engine, most will not respond to your wind controller at all without some fiddling in the mod matrix. Workflow is a very personal thing so it’s hard to recommend one synth over another as what I like may not be what you like.
For me personally, I find the workflow for the Hydrasynth Explorer easier to dial in for me than the Novation Peak and I like that it offers a wider variety of different filter/effects/modulation options. I’m also ok with the lack of CV Mod In (though if that was important the Hydrasynth Desktop can do it and has more knobs and displays for macros and sound editing). Also I really like the Random button on the Hydrasynth as it allows finding all kinds of sonically interesting and weird sounds. I still like my Peak but I tend to play more with my Hydrasynth as a result.
If you are okay with staying in software land there’s also good options that work with wind controllers without any of the hassle of fiddling with mod routes and what not like Davidson Audio’s EVI-NER and Lyrihorn or Imoxplus Respiro.
As an aside: there are other ways to get breath control than using the filter cutoff, it’s just the most common and most widely used mechanism. But this post is long enough already.
