Hey man, this is what i would suggest.

I would run the mic to the preamp (of course) and preamp to the compressor. (so yes, use the compressor)

Sonar 3 is nice and the plugins are nice, but you can't beat the real thing. Ive never used the mic your using, but I've used everything else.

you're gonna have to play around with the presonus to get the sound you want but i ussually have the drive around 10 o clock and the gain around 1 oclock -- i think that's a good starting point for that unit. you can adjust it from their.

Now the compressor, I like to hit it hard when i record a friend of mine had a home studio in his spare bedroom and I got his berringer compressor to sound like a Dbx (with less head room) If I remember correctly, i think i set the threshhold at -20 with a ratio of 4:1attack about 5 ms release about 400ms the i play with the gain till it's peaking around 0. (sometimes i record vocals in mono and run the left channel into the right side of the compressor theshhold 0 ratio infinite, .1ms attack 50 ms release. it works as a limiter if you want to push the vocals alittle harder. -- i'll tell you what we were recording the vocals and barely doing anything to them after that, maybe alittle compression on the bus just to squish all the vocals together. )

that compressor isnt the greatest, but if you use those as a starting point and maybe toy around with it. as far as mixing stage maybe add alittle mid range with a wide Q and add alittle hi's until it sparkles, then pull it back alittle.

ok that's probably information overload.... feel free to email me as well

welcome to Jake
even if he is the same old jake

first post and all he wants to do,
is help someone
:)
cool

as for the compressor,
if in doubt ... go easy until you understand are sure about what you are doing

man i would totaly agree with you if he was using analog stuff to mix, but i've found if you dont get those vocals good the first time, chances are you'll never get quite right (with out running a tun of plugins at once slowing things up a bit)

but under normal curcumstances that is really good advise as well.

Same Old Jake is a my Mc name, i'm a rapper from cleveland. I have a really simple studio in my artment for recording vocals, then have a set up with another dude for doing bands and such. sometimes i work wit an extremly talented engineer up here that has all the bells and whistles, he is sorta teaching me, but i get most of my imfo from practising and reading.

Hey thanks

Thanks a lot, that was great advice, and just so you all know I can never get over loaded with info. I soak all this stuff in. i will try these settings first thing when I record again. I think part of my problem is I don't really care for my voice all that much and all the teaking in world isn't going to change that. i can hold a tune but sometimes my pitch is just slightly off. man I wish i had enough money for voice lessons.
One more question. Would I be better off using a computer drum sequencer or hardware for drums. I have fruity loops and it just sounds, well fruity! :D Should I get another program or try and find some decent drum patches for the existing program? Any ideas? And REMEMBER, I CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH INFO!

I use fruity loops to create drum tracks for a lot of projects i work on. The first results were pretty discouraging, but now that i have a good handle on it, i've found FL to be a pretty capable program, and im pretty satisfied.

DEFINITELY get new drum samples. you didn't make it clear what genre(s) of music your'e working on. but there's plenty of stuff out there.

if you're looking for a more realistic, genuine drum sound...i've had good luck with some samples i found that were recorded at Blue Jay Studios. judging by my personal experience, other than the samples, the biggest key to realism is the use of the EQ, compression, and reverb. the effects in fruity loops aren't top-notch by any standards, but they still help immensely. Another thing that helps is to record all the drums via MIDI and then quantizing a little, instead of using the step sequencer.

im still not happy with how sampled cymbals sound, so i've actually been recording REAL hihats and crashes over the [basic] drum track.

play mostly rock

I play mostly rock music, (allbeit it is accoustic guitar). what web site would I go to in order to download some good rock patches. And I didn't know that I could use fl for midi, I will have to try that out.