I started off with Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies. It's a good introduction to the subject. It will help you get your feet wet and teach you some of the jargon.
I hope others will stop by with other recommendations. In the meantime, welcome to the board!
Jeff
Tell us about the rest of your setup. What software, what kind of computer, is everything purchased or cracked, that sort of stuff.
If a reboot clears the problem, it sounds like it's in your computer.
The Firepod has inserts on channels 1 and 2. That's where you can insert your compressor. A TRS cable from the Firepod that splits into 2 TS cables. Those go into the compressor in and out.
The Firepod is generally very highly thought of around here. I have one myself. The preamps are solid and it offers a lot of flexibility for the price. You can actually daisy-chain 3 of them together for 24 simultaneous inputs.
A mixer is not necessary. Some use them, but I believe most...
What I've observed leads me to believe that 24-bit versus 16-bit gives you effectively more headroom and greater precision in your mix. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
Are you miking your amp? If so, you might be able to plug an attenuator between your amp section and the speakers and run your amp at a higher level while keeping your volume down. That should allow the signal-to-noise level to be higher.
An attenuator should be a simple project.
Check it out:
http://www.presonus.com/firepodmultiunit.html
3 units=24 tracks with 6 switchable banks of phantom power and inserts available on 6 channels.
I checked with a couple of our computer experts here at work and they said there is no problem with mixing unlike peripherals on a single firewire chain. According to http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci212126,00.html, a firewire chain is like having everything on...