I was going to answer shortly after you posted the question. And I saw Analog Prophet answered, and I thought, “Yes, exactly”. And then Alain answered, and I thought, “Yes, exactly”. Hehe - so here I am posting the exact same thing. I see from a couple of your other posts that you have been trying to decide between a P5 and the OBX8. And from this post it sounds perhaps like you are leaning toward the Oberheim. Your question about hardware vs software is an excellent one and well worth considering.
My take on it is that if your primary goal is for capturing the sound for recording in your music, then you should go with the plugin. Unless you are recording to analog and distributing music to an analog medium, then it seems that one can argue there is no benefit (sonically speaking) for using an analog synth in that process. I don’t know if it is even possible in today’s world to release music that does not undergo A/D and D/A conversions somewhere along the line. Maybe record to tape and then have someone produce vinyl records from that without any digital parts in the middle? It seems unlikely to me.
But if you are wanting the knobs to turn and the physical interaction with the instrument, then I think it is definitely worth considering getting the hardware. I’m sure it is different for every person, but I truly find inspiration and joy in playing the “real” thing that I do not find in software plugins. I created a song recently (
https://open.spotify.com/track/5neYieINNfPUrBBG47YUYX) that only exists because I was playing with some melodic ideas on a physical Minimoog Model D. I suspect I could have gotten that same sound from one of the many Mini emulations (sorry for the bad word play). But I would not have been jamming and enjoying the sound and timbre in the first place with a software plugin. I think that at least half of the songs I create (bad as they are) come about simply because of the initial noodling I do on a physical synthesizer.
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