I guess if you need one, it has uses. Like long cable runs. Running a ribbon mic on a cord with phantom power enabled. Or if you just need that extra 20dB of gain. It is quite costly, and has a noise floor in addition to your preamps floor. I was thinking of getting one just so I don't fry my ribbon by accidentally using phantom power. Or otherwise use my ribbon in addition to an LDC on a preamp/interface that has only one phantom power button for it's two channels of input.