you don’t need expensive music gear to make great music. The only reason many pros have expensive gear is so they can work faster and more efficiently for business purposes. I can dial in a good attack and release setting for a drum sound with stock Logic or Ableton or Pro Tools plugins but something like Transient Master by NI shaves off a few extra minutes and in the context of a session or mix that can keep everything moving smoothly. The expensive stuff is mostly for quality of life stuff, you can use 12 stock plugins or 1 one really good 3rd party plugin. Spend hours tweaking a software synth and adding saturation etc to make it sound more analog or just having an alanog synth that just sounds like what you want already with the twist of a few knobs.  A focusrite and a universal audio interface don’t really sound all that much different,  especially if the source youre recording is great, the UAD interface is just made better so if you’re with a special client, you don’t want to have something that craps out on you or doesn’t have enough I/O or a cheap headphone jack or no alternate outputs, or latency issues, or a faulty usb jack, etc. In most cases you get what you pay for, and that doesn’t necessarily mean in terms of sound, just quality of parts and functionality. So whether or not you should invest in high end gear depends on what you’re doing. If you’re working alone and only working on your own music or a few friends/collaborators, use what you have. But if you’re running a business and want to keep things moving, invest in gear you can depend on that is versatile and handle many different sources well, with good quality components, from reputable companies with great customer service that stand by their name and products.