exactly...for real i don't know why every discussion about gear comes back to 10 people all saying its the person not the gear. i agree! but i think all of us know that at this point. every time i see gear discussed on here, mpc forums, or really anywhere, the thread ends in a group of people all saying well it doesnt matter cause its all about the person. and the truth is i think a lot of people say this to avoid considering whats actually best for them. if we're talking about the same person, the gear can matter. if a kid has a setup with latency up in the 30ms range on some 5 year old laptop and the SAME kid goes out and gets an mpc or setup with zero latency, guess what...gear does matter in that case. that is an acutal difference and will make music easier for him, plain and simple. you have a kid in a studio with p.o.s unshielded cables compared to the same kid in a studio with monster cables and uh, yeah, his sound will be quite different.nothing is black and white and this thing people always say about gear not having any relevance on what someone produces is just wrong sometimes. that being said, since i guess this is obligatory lol...i am NOT saying gear will transform someone from bad to good. but can it help someone reach their full potential? yes.
anytime that one of the most loyal hardware users switches to software i think theres a perfectly reasonable discussion to be had there, as nova said. and all i meant with my original post is that aside from being wrong to just follow other producers, it would be really wrong to follow just on this cause none of us will be using the same setup he is even with an mpd and battery.