Possibly stupid question about compressor placement

[LnTh]

So, excuse me if my questions come across as super noob. That's probably cause I AM one when it comes to recording

1) Say I wanna use a compressor (planning on dbx 266xl or something of that sort). And say, I wanna keep the sound that goes from my amps to my mics as pure as possible. Can I place the compressor after the mics and before mic pre amps?

2) Can I do the same for EQ, Effects Processor or maybe a Noise Gate?

Here's a super cool diagram incase the questions aren't clear :lol:

If the answer is YES, do they sound different if set up this way rather than like a normal rack or effects setup that's between preamp and power amp or in front of both?

 

[petermiller]

First thing is that it looks like you are using condenser mics based by the fact that you had put the phantom power in the diagram. None of these rack units will pass that to the mic so it wont even get power. Secondly You need a mic pre of any nature before the rack gear because its going to need to be brought up to line level to be used by the comp and effects and so on. Judgeing by your diagram it wouldnt make any difference if you just ran everything through the fx loop on your amp seeing as how the signal being recorded is saturated on both mics anyway, My suggestion is that you get a small mixer that you can live with the sound of the pre on, mic the amp use a direct out or one click on the insert and send that through your comp and effects and record one dry track and one wet track alongside eachother then you will have both to work with?

 

[LnTh]

Thanks peter. I also posted this elsewhere and from the replies I think I found the best solution for what I wanted to do.

I wanted to keep things pure as possible so I can post edit. But I wanna post edit with hardware instead of software. What they suggested was:

1) Mic 1 (condenser) -> phantom power -> preamp soundcard
2) Mic 2 (dynamic) -> preamp'ed soundcard
3) preamp out -> input of mixer (which has my effects on it's inserts) -> output of mixer -> preamp input

Does this seem possible? Not sure I got what they said 100% but it's starting to make sense. This way I can have a pure sound, and then an edited sound and mix as I like. Let me know if something doesn't make sense?

I like your way too but it'd be nice to keep both tracks pure as they go in the computer I think.

 

[petermiller]

Thats basically what I said not assuming that your interface had an insert and not assuming that you already had a mixer and not assuming you had more than two inputs into your interface. As there was no mention. Basically that would be a good way to go given you have these things at your disposal so I would agree.

 

[LnTh]

I do have those! Thanks