[Kahli Burke]

If you are talking about a plugin and not an outboard hardware compressor/limiter, I don't think that running the tracks in through auxes and then recording the limited signal is the best technique. For one, it could make it harder to notice if your signal is clipping, for another it doesn't let you change the plugin settings after recording.

You aren't going to get any more dynamic range from the tracks by limiting in this way. The tracks (regardless of whether they are audio tracks or aux inputs) have a specific dynamic range that you must work within. If the signal is high enough to clip an audio track, it would be high enough to clip the aux track as well. Really what you're doing here is just committing to your limiting levels because you don't record the raw audio signal, you record the processed version only. If you are using an outboard compressor on the signals before ever running it into you 001, that's a different story, but you probably don't need to do that either.

So my recommendation is to record the raw audio and then experiment with limiting/compression after the fact. Then you can adjust the thresholds/ratios to the performance and even automate them for different songs if they have different dynamics.

Now the problem you will need to address is how to set your recording levels properly without clipping. As you may have already read in this forum, if you are recording at 24-bit resolution, you already have a very large dynamic range to work within (144dB), this means that you don't need to have your recording levels really high in order to get good results. Forget about the analog days and the idea of hitting the tape hard (so the meters peak in the red) in order to get a saturated sound. 24 bit recording means your noise floor is at -144dB, which is going to be much much better than the preamps, microphones and space you're recording in. You're basically going to get the same results whether your levels are at -3dB or at -20dB. Of course you'll want to bring the average levels up after you record when you are averaging a lower level, but by turning the gain down, you'll have less inherent noise from the preamps (cleaner sound) and you'll give yourself headroom for loud transients you'll get in that song where the drummer goes ape.

I record my band live using Pro Tools and an 002. I'm in the same situation with regards to tweaking levels while playing, so I need to set and forget. The best technique I've found is to do a short sound check to set the levels before we play. When I do this I have the other musicians play as hard as they think they're going to. I set the gain on preamps so that my levels are clearly in the green, maybe showing just a tiny bit of yellow. I then back off the levels just slightly to adjust for the fact that everyone ends up playing louder then their "loudest" when I do that sound check.

So this way, I get the recording at decent levels without having to worry about clipping. The waveforms look a little wimpy on the screen, that's true, but you've got a lot of headroom to work with and then you can compress after the fact when you can critically listen to avoid squashing or distorting the sound and compress/limit to taste.

Hope it helps,

Kahli