I think the bar has been raised by what even casual producers can do with DAWs. I gave a listen to a classic drum and bass album recently (Wormhole by Ed Rush and Optical) and while I really enjoyed it, by the end of the album I can kind of tell how many of the various samples were used over and over again. The Wikipedia article[1] lists the hardware/software they used, and it looks like the recording computer was an Apple LCII. So a lot of what they were able to make seems like it would have been limited by what hardware they were able to finagle.
Compare that to a similarly layered and voiced project in a modern DAW. While the compute requirements have gone up drastically, the complexity the DAW has compressed into a single screen would make it trivial to make a similar album now (from a purely technical standpoint - the album is still the work of an artist).
Compare that to a similarly layered and voiced project in a modern DAW. While the compute requirements have gone up drastically, the complexity the DAW has compressed into a single screen would make it trivial to make a similar album now (from a purely technical standpoint - the album is still the work of an artist).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole_(album)