The Triton fethead is just a "plug it in and go" solution in a lot of setups. That dbx preamp has a lot of knobs that, for the most part, need to be set right in order for it to work at all - let alone help the situation.
Also worth noting that the fethead is tiny - it sits inline with your cable, whereas that dbx requires you to mount 19" rack gear at your desk, which is a big ask for a lot of people.
But that's the thing. The Triton is just a pre-amp, the Scarlett also has its own pre-amp, but maybe it's not strong enough to drive the Shure mic (it's strong enough for most other mics).
The DBX also has a pre-amp but it does many other things to improve the quality of your audio where as the Triton does nothing except boost the signal. I would classify the DBX as very much helping the situation. Way more than just having a pre-amp.
> whereas that dbx requires you to mount 19" rack gear at your desk, which is a big ask for a lot of people.
I don't think having a piece of gear on your desk is a big ask for a personal recording studio. It's not like you're sometimes streaming or recording your podcast at Starbucks. You also don't need to mount it. It sits flush on a desk without straining any of the parts or sitting uneven.
It's been happily sitting on my desk for a long time now.
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.
Totally, but...
Doing it in software can be a pain because ideally you just want to flip your recorder on, talk and be done with it. Especially when your day to day involves recording many videos.
I know OBS has VST support but if you ever record outside of OBS everything sounds different.
Or if you want system wide software processing, it gets really complex with audio redirects / patching where it becomes a ceremony just to begin recording, and you need to worry about xruns, pops and other weird abnormalities unless the software you use is 100% amazing.
The only software I ever found to work well for that was in Windows using ASIO Link Pro to patch the real-time output of REAPER as microphone input to any app, but the author literally died and his license key server went offline (I bought it like 4-5 years ago). That is what eventually lead me to use the DBX. Now I just turn it on and never think about it, because it works the same across all apps with no ceremony, and will work on Linux too (or any OS).