It seems like this thread is descending into some plug in bashing.
In my personal experience plug ins and Hardware definately sound different, but to say hardware sounds out right better is speculative at best.
Its true there are a lot of plugs that are really poor, but theres also a lot of hardware that is very poor, so lets ignore that for now, because thats the stuff people dont really remember or mention when it comes to hardware.
But the top picks of the plugin world (Flux, Blockfish, Waves multiband) are incredibly pristine, and definately bring something to the table that hardware couldnt compete with, as plugins being in the box have a cleaner and shorter signal path. (im aware that A/D converting and going through cables and such like will impart other qualities to the sound again, but thats not always best and not always what people want)
There are also those plug ins which set out to emulate esoteric gear of the past, and a few do it very well (waves SSL, Waves API, Sonalksis) , i will say they dont sound the same as the hardwar, but again both have their own qualities, but chosing is an ultimate between the 2 is again personal preference.
I dont want to get into a debate here because its been done a million times beofre in a million other forums. I just want my 2 cents to be here so anyone reading this who might be put off plugin because of others comments, might actually just give some plugins and hardware a try and make up their own minds.