One of our close vote reasons has the following explanation:
Questions seeking recommendations for specific equipment are off-topic, because they are primarily opinion based. Instead, describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used, and ask what you should look for to achieve that.
For questions like "what's the best analogue synthesizer?", that wording seems to fit perfectly - recommendations in reply to that question are likely to be very opinion-based, and it's well-understood that there are other sites that are better-suited to that kind of thing.
However, now and again we get a question that is essentially saying "I want to do X", where not everyone would know what kind of device or piece of software would be needed to do that task. A recent example is Waveform stitch/synthesis tool. Quite often these questions do "describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used", and yet because what's being described is quite specific, some people seem to regard them as asking for "recommendations for specific equipment" - which in a sense they are, but not in the "what's the best analogue synthesizer?" sense of the word 'recommendation'.
Decision: Change policy for equipment questions pointed out some similar problems some years ago - there seems to be agreement there that the questions that need to be targeted are those that recommend e.g. brands in an opinion-based way, and that we need not target all questions that may reasonably involve an recommendation regarding equipment as part of the answer.
Edit: I agree with those who have pointed out that the example question I mentioned has issues with clarity - a couple more that I found with a quick scan are Types of tools to automate "tape-like" audio manipulation and Looking for an app that can record piano and visually represent what was played. Both of these are along similar lines - "I want to do this, but I don't know what I should be searching for". These questions may have their issues too, but for both of those I would question whether they seek "recommendations" in the sense that Decision: Change policy for equipment questions seemed to agree that "recommendations" is meant.