Not exactly a newb but signal flow always gets me going because i always end up running 300 different possible scenarios and confusing the hell out of myself. I plan on buying a Focusrite liquid Saffire 56 firewire audio interface that has 2 liquid preamps on 1 and 2. Lets say I want to record a mono vocal track but i want front end compression. meaning i wanna go from the mic to the focusrite (where the signal is boosted by the preamp) now... this is where i get confused, I want to run this signal out of the focusrite and into a PRO VLA and then have front end amplification and compression going into protools. How do i achieve this? do I need a mixer? do I need a Y-insert cable? 2 balanced trs cables? gah! so confused!!!!! First post btw!!! I know it seems like a simple or stupid question but is there really such thing these days?