Can you make your music sound perfect with a laptop? Yes, absolutely.
Is outboard and/or analog gear necessary to make your music sound good? Absolutely not at all. We can put that myth to a grave.
Is one better than the other? No.

Andrew Scheps works 100% in the box these days, only using his laptop to mix the music. That fact speaks volumes.

And if you don’t know the league he’s in…look him up. The pic that’s posted is his insane load of the most coveted gear, including several highly regarded Neve consoles.

My point is not that you shouldn’t be using outboard gear if that’s your thing, but I’m just happy we can admit that in mixing and mastering as well as producing music, outboard/analog gear does not sound better anymore. That has been a long-standing mantra that was true for a long time while digital tools were in their infancy.
These days, it is safe to say digital and analog are equal.

Especially in mixing and mastering, you don’t need to have to have your music treated in a big studio with tons of fancy-looking gear anymore – by engineers who charge you tons because they paid tons and tons for their gear.
If you need quality audio engineering service with expensive sound and inexpensive price, contact Mastering and Mixing by Fanu and I’ll take your music where it needs to go.

Me, I’m just happy to be one of the ITB engineers in demand.
I often get asked, “What the heck did you do to it? What gear did you use?” and I say I work 100% in the box (admittedly using lots of plugins emulation highly-regarded analog gear).

It’s in the ear, not in the gear.
You just have to know how to use your tools, which of course applies to both analog and digital.