[Dorian Green]

heya!

To achieve that you have to set an Aux track first where you insert your compression plugin,the input will be you mic and the output an available bus.Then you just set the audio track input as your bus.

IMO I wouldn't do that as you can't reverse the process.Unless you want to save a bit of RTAS power I can't see the point using it during tracking as you can use it during mixing.

You may think it could avoid your signal to peak but it's a false limiting as your signal has already been thru the AD converter.So maybe the signal has peaked during tracking but you can't check it as the plugin compressor will hide it.

The only way to apply an effective soft compression during tracking is thru an hardware compressor placed between your preamp and your AtD converter.

But don't worry working at 24bitdepth you can record at a quite low level (with peaks around -10 to -5 dBFS).You won't loose any quality.

Welcome in digital world!