[Joseph Hanna]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

For home recording, I've never found hardware compressors to be very useful (and I have tried :-). Because they compress on the way in, you have to have all your settings correct, even while you're being both performer and audio engineer. I'm sure there's a place for them in a "real" studio, but for those of us recording in more modest environments, it seems better to me to record with modest levels to be sure you don't overdrive anything, and leave all operations, including compression, EQ, etc, for the mixing stage, where you can hear what you're doing, and most importantly, everything is reversible. It also has the advantage that there are fantastic compression plugins that don't cost anything close to their hardware counterparts.

I don't wanna get too far off the track here but I'd submit if you have a hardware compressor that has sufficient enough sonic character and or any other sonic trait that software can't provide you can always "insert" it. I think most all DAW's these days have a fairly latency controlled insert path. I have a Charter Oak compressor (hardware) that behaves and sounds like no other compressor I've ever encountered. Probably my single most vital audio tool I have. Admittedly you have limited channels as opposed to virtually endless software instantiations but for acoustic guitar I've never heard a better compressor!