Advice on a channel strip for mono voice

[David MacNeill]

I'm setting up a modest recording studio for home-based startup company doing audiobooks. We're using an MBox and PTLE 6.9.2 on a new 20" iMac G5 1.8GHz. Our first sample recordings that we sent to publishers elicited some complaints about sound quality, specifically the levels (" your peaks are only -8.9db") noise floor ("sounds like it's raining softly" and "I measure the noise at -54db, should be closer to -70db") and compression settings ("what is that, 3:1? Yikes!"). I'm using a Shure KSM44 large-diaphragm mic, a Stedman pop screen, Mogami Gold cabling, and we have a very good isolation booth, so I'm guessing/hoping all we need a better, smoother channel strip to drive the MBox, something with a good compressor and variable impedence for the mic.

Considered the new Focusrite TrakMaster Pro, but they are backordered for a month and we need something next week. My man Dave Brow at Sweetwater suggested the Presonus Eureka as a better unit for not a whole lot more money. We can't afford the Eureka digital option, so I won't be able to SPDIF the Eureka straight in to bypass the MBox preamp -- it'll have to be double-preamped. Our voice talent has several decades of pro experience, so that's likely not the problem. Please don't suggest we change to a different mic, as the KSM44 is all we have to work with.

I'm at the limits of my expertise and humbly request advice from the higher powers that dwell in the DUC. Will this upgrade in our signal path improve our results over MBox preamplification and "welfare plug-in" compression with our KSM44?

~Dave
17" PowerBook G4 1.5GHz/2GB RAM/Tiger 10.4.2 | Digi 002R/Pro Tools LE 6.9.2 | LaCie Big Disk Extreme 512GB/FW800 | LaCie FW800 PC Card | Focusrite VoiceMaster Pro and TwinTrak Pro channel strips