compressor help

[marns45]

Hi, I am trying to record a vocalist who sings with an extremely large dynamic range. This makes it very hard to get decent levels for most of what he sings because then he will cause some clipping elsewhere. I was hoping to run his vocals through a compressor before it hits the daw so I can record him a bit hotter to get a better sound. I am recording to protools through an mbox 2, and was wondering if anyone knows a way I can add a compressor to that? I know usually I would have to run the mic into a preamp first, and the mbox doesn't have traditional inserts to add anything to the signal chain, but maybe someone has encountered a similar problem and found a creative solution? I do plan on getting a separate preamp at some point, but budget constraints force me to have to wait on that. Any suggestions are appreciated

[magno]

I doubt the a/d converters in you mbox will care if the vocal is compressed or not.
Since you said you're on a budget, just use VST compressors. You can put one on an insert in protools and print that directly. If you really want to do this I would only add the slightest bit of compression, not even enough to hear an audible effect, then add more compression as needed, then maybe more. Try layering it at different frequencies a little at a time.

[.tom]

It would make a huge difference to use a cmp in that sitch!!!! If the mbox is two pre's and has ch1 out then route that out to a analog compressor and back in to ch2 preamp in and record ch2.

even a cheap behringer cmp is better than nuthin

[mdh]

You may take this with a grain of salt, since I'm a complete newbie to recording, but not entirely to audio electronics. But, if your audio interface preamps are clipping at the levels you want to record at, then you need an outboard preamp with more headroom than what's in the interface, followed by a hardware compressor, from which you would presumably take a line level output into your interface. As I see it, the problem with the first response, above, is that your problem is clipping; software compression won't help with that. The problem with the second answer is almost the same -- if you use one of your interface preamps before the compressor, it will clip.

So, maybe you can get a channel strip with a preamp, compressor, and even EQ. I have no idea what's available, though, and whether you're likely to find something with substantially better headroom than the preamps in your interface. To me, this sounds like an occasion for a close reading of the preamp specifications, because there's no guarantee that an outboard preamp will get you the headroom you're looking for.