Want your mind blown? Omni Trio made most of his music with an Amiga 500, a very early PC from the 80s, it was unique in that it was an all in one self contained sampling + sequencing system, contrast to other solutions at the time, e.g. seperately connected sampler and sequencer via MIDI cable. In any case, by todays standards these devices were more musical. The reason why lies in the design of the Amiga and shall be explained. The digital to analog chip - codename Paula - was 8 bit. The music software installed was capable of 4 mono lanes maximum - each lane used a dedicated part of the paula converter (4 converters in parallel). The samples loaded in the software arranged across the 4 tracks, initiating the sequence converted each sample INDEPENDANTLY into the analog domain where they were then mixed - Note the streams were muxxed IN THE ANALOG DOMAIN. From here the resultant signal - electricity at this point - would feed the users speakers.
This is a far cry from how music is made today. The main reason why music mostly sucks today, EDM in particular is due to a mis-understanding + mis-applicaiton of digital technology by the thousands/millions of whom take upon it themselves to experiment and release what ever they made using only their mouse and stereo headphones in an aux jack.
The trick is to layer music with paralleled lo-rez converters and THEN digitise the finished work with one high res converter. This was how digital music was introduced, sounds were ALWAYS mixed in the analog domain, including those behemoth synthezisers.. This is why the 80s 'sounded' great - Music taste has little to do with it. 99% of EDM music today is mixed INSIDE the computer and subsequently played through a stereo sound card / device (then to speakers). Here, the signal CANNOT move around like it does with the Paula chipset. No matter how clever software devs think they are, they cannot match the superior (temporal/timing) resolution of universe and even then one would need a super computer. Unlike the Paula, the objective of converters today is 'Accuracy' and their application rooted in 'Transparent Transfer', i.e. transfer of finished mixes to the public in as losslessly a way as possible (in those days, the CD).
If guitar strings, which also generate waves, were transparent, we would not hear them. Synth designers of the olde understood this. Disenfranchised sound card and chipset designers of late do not. A guitar string could be viewed as an non linear 8bit converter give or take infinite time. The same could be said for a all acoustic instruments because physical inertia of the string and that in an electical medium is essentially the same. When string is plucked, the result is chaotic - musical - far from linear. A 24bit converter cannot replicate this because they were concieved to maintain linearity of the passing signal and achieves this by means of digital filters which ♥♥♥♥ with the timing of samples as they enter/exit the converter. Therefore anything 24bit is inherantly linear and is thus, not musical.
The distinction between linear converters, (those as initially used for transfer of finished work but later permeated production), and converters like those used in the Amiga (Paula) seems to be largely un-ackowledged by IC and sound device manufacturers, including those used by supposed 'pros'. Listeners, artists, composers, producers, engineers, pro' s depend on equipment manufacturers, who in turn, trust those who design chipsets and the latter are oblivious. Since 1990, the DNA of Electronic music (DNA being the equipment used to make it) has de-evolved, from musical to highly linear un musical. The last of the mohicans, are synthesizer designers - who phased out production in the late 90s as personal computing and music piracy took over. This is the reality. The degredation was gradual enough to go unnoticed, consequently most music today produced sounds less musical by default.