one main difference is that dedicated hardware usually runs a highly optimized, very minimalistic OS which usually boots quickly and has more-or-less direct access to hardware components, and probably has many advantages for the developer.
then there’s the hardware components themselves, such as DSPs, USB, memory. They are all selected to be appropriate for the task at hand, or at least an appropriate package of components is chosen. So e.g. the DSP FX in the Analog Four are high quality, with very low latency, running on a processor that is installed in the machine just for this purpose.
On a general purpose PC, all hardware is usually managed by the OS, which may be very greedy about giving resources to apps! Not sure how close you can get to having direct access by writing a driver for the USB for instance. From the POV of a desktop OS, “realtime”-audio or MIDI are not exactly a high priority.
Oh I agree and know all this ^ These are some of the reasons I prefer hardware.
Sorry for any confusion, I was just arguing the '“software doesn’t last because of updates necessary to software and hardware” idea. Not that they are the same in general. I can think of plenty of reasons dedicated hardware has advantages, but the update thing isn’t one of them.
One more thing…Elektron used high quality components. Their machines are built to last. The average standard PC has no high quality components and is built to break, preferably right after the warranty ran out…
Sure the average PC is shit, but it’s also like £300. You get what you pay for with computers. If you spent the same price as a Machinedrum UW on building a dedicated music PC, you could get high quality components. And also my OT is less than 3 years old and has headphone crackle and a bent cf card reader. If it were a PC I could fix that no problem, but not as easy with the OT. But honestly I do prefer hardware for most stuff and this topic is a bit off topic, so I bow out.