meh... Software's come a long way and is just as teak-able (if not more so, because you can program samples/arpeggiations/etc from its source or from scratch without the limitations of the firmware given by the producer of the hardware equipment). Granted the external hardware recording modules and effects processors still beat any software, when it comes to actual sampling I prefer software like gigastudio. Maybe I've just not heard the right hardware, but I have listened to pretty much everything from Roland, Korg, EMU, Yamaha, etc... Even the highest end hardware had mediocre samples (from what I heard in the demos). Where software offers virtually unlimited polyphony, release triggers, and seamless integration into sequencing software that I'm a little more familiar with as opposed to sequencing from a little green lcd screen with an alien GUI.
BTW, my oppinion on this only really applies to symphonic music... any other genre and hardware kicks softwares @$$...
And I don't consider rackmounts running sampling software a hardware sampler

And a lot of CD's I've heard were actually done with software... Trent Reznor did his entire first album on a Macintosh computer (which must have been a nightmare). And Composer Bill Brown (one of the best video game composers out there) has a $30 thousand dollar studio, but most of his samples are either created from his computer running Gigastudio with Garritan Orchestral Strings or from a live orchestra (or a mix of the two; ie Undying soundtrack)