You can't record through plugins... You could monitor through plugs, although I can't really imagine why anyone would (except maybe some verb for a vocalist or something).
If you're using post conversion digital dynamics control at the input, I'd very, very incredibly highly suggest that you NOT do that... How you could possibly know what your input stage is doing? It's not going to compress the signal - If you're overdriving and clipping (which is what it sounds like from the description) at the input chain, all you're doing is making a really, really bad thing much worse.
Or am I misunderstanding something...?