I get really lost in these discussions only because until VERY recently I never used anything other than the Cakewalk soft synth that came with Sonar, and very little of that. I played parts in through a controller and played them back through my synthesizers. Granted I could get a lot of studio space back by not doing it that way but there's just something about the sounds in those old Ensoniq synths that I can't let go of. The warmth of those strings, the bite of the pianos....