[nickjj]

> Most people, especially someone just recording dev screencasts or video conferencing don't at all need a $300-350 preamp. It just seems like so much overkill. You could get perfectly usable noise reduction baked into Audacity, or with $50 plugin if the noise is existing.

I do record dev screencasts. Using Audacity is ok but it's extremely tedious if you record a lot of videos.

That means for every video you create you need to split and export your audio, import it into Audacity, get a noise sample, filter it out, export the new audio, import it back into your video editor and then edit as planned.

That work flow will drain your soul if you're trying to record a 150 video course, or you put out new videos every day.

Some video editors like Camtasia, Screenflow and Resolve have decent enough noise cancellation filters where you can press 1 button and wait 10 seconds to avoid having to do that with Audacity, but it also means if you ever do live streaming you'll need to set up a different type of VST with OBS, otherwise your live streams will sound bad.

But you're right, for starting out I wouldn't bother with any of that. That's why I think the AT2005 is a great mic for $80 bucks. It works over USB on its own but it also has XLR support so you can "grow" into it if you decide to use hardware to save time later. The DBX is a lot more than a $300 pre-amp btw.