You would be destroying the fidelity of your tracks, most likely.

What you would be doing is taking your digital, and converting it to analog, processing it, and putting it back into the digital form.

There are many (even free!) software plug-ins available that will keep you "in the box" (digital).

They have some free ones: link removed

I have a lot of plugins but I want something more serious, how can you use an hardware thing like that ?

Don't listen to it. In the box is only worth it when you're in love.

Are you in a position to go and do some tours of the higher class music shops and test some compressors out?
Can you hit up a big studio and sample some of the really good pieces of hardware out there on a half day trial?

I have no real experience with any hardware worth more than a few cents, but I know deep down inside that emulating something is not the same as actually being something. Fake is a word that springs to mind.

You could be looking for a preamp strip with a built in compressor, so you can find the sound you want then go to tape, or as it is in this day and age, to disk...

There are many many options.

Do you have a budget?

What's wrong with plugins? If you have a slow CPU, fair enough - but like MadTiger hinted at, these units are only going to ruin your audio signal until you drop a substantial amount on converters and outboard so that you don't trash the signal by converting it to digital twice.

Never mind the grounding and noise issues you get from analog gear.

If you really want to, route the track in Cubase to an output on your interface, attach that output to an Input on your outboard gear, then the Output of your outboard to an input on your interface.
How you do that in Cubase is beyond me.

mckaymental wrote: Hi! I recently got into recording and I use a presonus firepod connected with Cubase in my computer. I was thinking of getting a little hardware compressor , reverb or eq and I want to know how I connect it to apply this new effect into already recorded tracks?

Thanks to help me out !

You would have to route the channels you intend to affect out to hardware outputs on your Firepod. Into the compressor then back into free channels on your Firepod. These channels would have to then be re-recorded onto new tracks. All of this will add latency. MUCH more than if you were to simply use plugins. There are plenty of very good plugins out there. There are even some very good free plugins. Check out these free plugins from Antress.

Antress site looks very interesting. Have to try them out. Thanx

Just a warning on the Antress plug ins. They can be resource hogs. They can also sound really good but they tend to use up a bit more cpu than other plug ins.

ok but my cpu and ram are pretty extensive,

Cool it's just that if you're using a lot of instances of say one of the compressors or the 1083 eq emulator, it can be taxing. That's all.

Also check out Bootsie's plugs:
http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/downloads/

And Stillwell; not free but very reasonable.
http://www.stillwellaudio.com/
(The Rocket is great)

why would he need to do all this back and forth ada converting? couldnt you just put the analog compressor between the source and soundcard and compress on the way in?

mainly wrote: why would he need to do all this back and forth ada converting? couldnt you just put the analog compressor between the source and soundcard and compress on the way in?

The op wants to add comp and eq during the mix. Different story if it was during tracking.

i usually put my bounces thru SSL bus compressors.

when you tried once, you will know why we have to

do this back and forth.