An awkward reality is that while prosumer preamps like those in the Scarlett are very nice for what they are, you often find yourself needing more clean gain than they comfortably provide. The Scarlett Solo’s gain range is listed as 56dB, and while that seems like a lot, and it seems like it should be good enough, for voice applications at normal speaking volumes and with typical microphones, you want more gain. From what I understand, this is more or less the amount of gain you can get in a single gain stage without introducing tons of dirt.

I personally have a Scarlett and a small assortment of mics, including dynamics, small and large diaphragm condensers, and ribbon mics. It’s only for louder sources like drums and guitar amps that I feel comfortable plugging straight into the Scarlett. For everything else, I plug into an outboard preamp.

While the DBX is nice, everything but gain can be done in software later on. I’d go ahead and recommend the DBX to most people because it solves the problem “once and for all” rather than forcing you to configure every different piece of audio software you use, but for my own personal use I’m much happier doing all EQ, compression, gating, de-essing, etc. in software.

That stuff isn’t necessary in hardware, but you really do need the gain.