Yes! But, huge but, very huge but, you lose the affordance of the switches and the buttons and the knobs and the patch cables. And that is a terrible loss for fiddling and discovery.
Now that I understand most of it, I am really considering buying a ARP 2600 replica.
So yes, the switch from software to hardware comes with time. But, at least for me, the first step is cheap apps on my already-owned tablet.
Small comments/interrogations regarding hardware vs software in this post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45235398
May be you have some opinion regarding these.
And something like VCVRack is heaven to learn, experiment and understand what one can do with synthesis, step by step.
Experiences vary but sliding a slider on a screen is worth the benefits.
I mean, it's terrific to have an affordable replica, especially for discovery, I'm not debating the price-point advantage (for both acquisition and maintenance), but this is not an on-par replacement.
In an analog (less so in digital, but still somehow) synth, the controls are the instrument itself: they are in a specific place, react in a specific way, and physically part of the device that outputs the sound, and they stay there: you cannot move one without the other. The instrument has its own character. It's still more abstract than a classical instrument like the violin or the piano where the physical action alone is done and felt in real time, of course. It's significantly more incarnated than software + generic (in a good way) controllers.
The good side of this is that after having software replicas or original synthetisers, there's room to build new exciting embodiments/physical instruments.