Blue Sky...

[Starship Krupa]

I don't understand why printing one effect (compression) on a few tracks (vocals) is going to have such a great effect of reducing the load on my cpu and memory, thereby resulting in audible improvements.

Is singing through a dynamic mic into guitar stompbox going to result in a better vocal sound vs. going straight into my Presonus Firepod's preamps with my AT2040, thereby preserving the dynamic range for whatever processing I want to use later?

My DAW is a quad core i7 with 16G of RAM that runs dozens of plug-ins without breaking a sweat.

Also, with 140dB of dynamic range, why would one record at low levels? I carefully set the input on the preamps on my interface to get a nice hot signal so that I have plenty to work with while I'm mixing. Not so hot that it clips, but hot enough that I'm actually using that dynamic range, not recording a meek signal down in the digital mud. It's not an either/or.

[msnickybee]

I don't understand why printing one effect (compression) on a few tracks (vocals) is going to have such a great effect of reducing the load on my cpu and memory, thereby resulting in audible improvements.
Is singing through a dynamic mic into guitar stompbox going to result in a better vocal sound vs. going straight into my Presonus Firepod's preamps with my AT2040, thereby preserving the dynamic range for whatever processing I want to use later?
My DAW is a quad core i7 with 16G of RAM that runs dozens of plug-ins without breaking a sweat.
Also, with 140dB of dynamic range, why would one record at low levels? I carefully set the input on the preamps on my interface to get a nice hot signal so that I have plenty to work with while I'm mixing. Not so hot that it clips, but hot enough that I'm actually using that dynamic range, not recording a meek signal down in the digital mud. It's not an either/or.

Completely agree. Just think we're talking about different things, I guess. For me, it's the transients we can't see, the harshness, why record it in the first place? Yes, my PC also is all SSD and can handle all the plugins, but I'm now getting better results not tracking transient noise from acoustic guitar (it's hard to - for me anyway - to play perfect, one tap and there's 0dB), or vocals - one click and with the right technique, sure, it can be completely minimised, but 10000 studios can't be wrong... I'm not extolling outboard per se, far from it!
And I don't think it's at all about load, well, not in my case. And I certainly wasn't suggesting using a guitar pedal for compression or any effects, gawd no... there's lots of better outboard than that (those are meant for 'leccy guitars) - eg Allen & Heath, various "channel strips" etc etc...but I'm a complete amateur.
Hmmm. Just lots of things to try. My Fostex 380s is coming out of the loft, as it's got brilliant EQ on it, sadly neither my Audient or Cakewalk interfaces have a low-cut. Makes sense to not send those super lows to the pre-amps to me...unless it's bass guitar

[msnickybee]

Interesting perspective in this article on compression during tracking vs afterwards