Most of this goes way over my head but it still fascinates me to no end. Read why below.
I do find synths awesome, just like the people that can use them and are able to unlock their potential. But I'm not a musician and the only real synth I ever owned was a Korg I saved from the refuse collection decades ago. I think it was this one: https://pic8.co/sh/W5T1YG.png It was in miserable shape. The side pieces were missing and some of the plastic keys were destroyed and partly missing. I took it home anyway, powered it up and hooked it up to my hifi. Oh the sounds that thing could produce.
Back then I was in the orbit of some musicians and one of them had his own little chaotic studio. He used a C64 with a MIDI interface and later an Atari ST. With its built in MIDI ports it was the machine of choice for quite a few, albeit far more professional, production outfits in Germany. On the MIDI side there was the trusty Roland MT32, a few Keyboards and the rest of the production was a 16 channel mixer, a 4-track TEAC and an 8-track Tascam tape machine. All put into a matte-black spray-painted console made from premium quality particle board.
We had some things in common. Our love for music and alcohol for example. Also, I knew which end of the soldering iron gets hot, which came in handy. Also learned a few things, like how to mike a base drum stuffed with comforters, how to clean cigarette-ash-filled mixer faders and to never let the inebriated near any equipment more sensitive than an anvil.
I dug in my CD pile and in case you're curious, I can try and rip some tracks created in that very studio appx. 30 years ago and make them available to download for you.
Edit: We used 'Cubase' and some other sequencer software on the Atari computers, AFAICR. It was mindbogglingly good for the time, believe me.