Using outboard compressor as input to DAW

[OldCopper]

Sorry for the newbie question. I tried over in that forum but didn't get an answer to what seems to me a straight forward question. Maybe it's a REALLY stupid question...

I'm using Vegas. I can use the FX compressor there for mix down edits but not tracking. (TRUE?) Would it not be to some advantage to have a good quality (maybe tube) compressor between my mixer and the soundcard? Won't that take out 'spikes' of high volume before they load onto the hard disk?

Thanks for your help.

 

[pglewis]

I can use the FX compressor there for mix down edits but not tracking. (TRUE?)

Correct. If you wanted to use the compressor plug-in to protect you from peaking (over 0dB digital), the plug-in would have to come before the card's converters. This, of course, is impossible. The plug-in can only be fed a signal after it's already been converted to digital (peaks and all).

Won't that take out 'spikes' of high volume before they load onto the hard disk?

A high ratio and high threshold should do the trick. There's no need to "compress" per-se, if you just want to tame the peaks.