The point is about diminishing returns. There's nothing you can do in one modern DAW that you can't with the others. The enhancements you get year over year are minimal and the amount of users who are pushing those tools to their limits is negligible.
Heck, the more advanced users end up going with a lot of hardware-based solutions and analog equipment.
Your point being? "A subpar DAW should be enough for everybody in 2017 as long as it's better than 70s era studio technology"?
Not to mention that you compare apples and oranges. These people did rock, punk and/or jazz, not modern r&b, pop or electronic music that are usually more demanding of a DAW for one.
Second they had tens of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars as a budget for a single record, great facilities with top-notch acoustics, multiple producers, access to orchestras and top-notch musicians, and crazily expensive consoles with people to operate them for them.
Third one doesn't compete against Louis Armstrong era sound but against their own's generation's sound and production techniques.