yeah had an mpc for 6 years. was fun but yes, tedious.
think you're still missing my point, though. not a question of being as good as an mpc, but that you could exactly emulate an mpc-based live PA if you wanted to. you wouldn't have to, by any means. but you could, if you were one of those "hardware only" types. so it's not a case of "different means," which is what i've always thought was the point of the "hardware not software" argument.
from that, you can extrapolate that "if you can do exactly what you did with hardware, but also this other stuff, then what's the advantage of hardware supposed to be again?"