Actually he uses a lot of software. There's ableton + several vst plugins like ozone izotope, waves L2, waves GTR : it still costs thousands of dollars...
I have an Ableton driven studio with oodles of softsynths. I'd say the difference is a factor of 10 at the least even with higher end software. What you do end up spending on is some of the hardware you can't avoid (quality audio interfaces, reverb units, controllers).
