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hi Nina, yes an analog compressor could help you out in this case. having said that, if you record with 24 bit, you have a dynamic range of 144 dB (in theory), which is certainly more than the human range can cover. i.e. you might just be setting the gain too high currently. you would normally set the gain so that it does not clip at the peak of your song. you can approximate your loudest part for setting the gain, no need to hit the right notes, just be loud. then, set it so there is still some headroom (like -6 dB at the loudest peak). that way there is no way it will ever clip during your performance. if then the soft passages are too soft for you on your headphones, you could use a digital compressor to even it out. digital compressors usually come free in some variety so that's why i would suggest you do it that way. depending on what you mean by "cheap", you might not be so happy with whatever you get for that price, while you can get some really good digital clones of vintage compressors for free. another thing, if you later find it is too compressed, there is nothing you can do to uncompress it, if it was recorded through the hardware.

if you learn good microphone technique and back off for the louder parts, you would not even need a compressor in the first place... yes, in a professional studio you would have some light compression on the vocals while recording, but more so to even the track out mildly, vs. squashing the loud parts to prevent the input from clipping. you would also have the engineer there to regulate the gain and catch any peaks when it is getting too hot.

not wanting to talk you out of buying a compressor, just some thoughts to save you some money, but if you name your budget, i or someone else might actually be able to help you find a device that might be suitable for what you want, if you prefer to do still buy something.

Ken likes live rooms. Rooms with a little bit of natural reverb. The room he's using now has a high ceiling and has wood flooring and ceiling, and no sound treatment on the walls. There is a small carpet on the floor, but the room is mostly reflective wood.

The room is actually bigger than it looks in the videos. I was surprised at how big it actually is when I saw it in person for the first time.

There are a lot of people who spend a lot of money making their recording rooms very dead, acoustically speaking. Ken likes a very LIVE sounding room.

One of the reasons people want to record in a dead sounding room is because they want to edit and slice and dice the vocals, recording maybe one word or note or syllable at a time. You don't have to do that if you can sing well enough to get full takes without splicing together a Frankenstein of overdubs. A dead room makes it easier to hide edits. Then you smear the cuts over with artificial reverb. Room resonance may make it more difficult to chop up bits and pieces of audio to collage them into a composited verse or chorus.

There is a lot of misinformation about how buying expensive acoustical treatments is what you need to get great recordings. Ken has a few, but not many, pieces of acoustical tiles in his control room, but only a few Persian carpet throw rugs in his vocal studio. If you are close enough to the mic, you get very little room sound in the mic, compared to the level of the vocal. It sounds so natural, you don't notice it.

If you do have acoustical issues, like standing waves or objectionable resonances, you may need to do a lot of treatment, or start over with a room that is better suited for recording.

Ken's studio in Hawaii (which was covered with lava about 3 years ago) had hard floors, ceilings, and walls, all wood. The room was very, very LIVE. His mixing room was like that, as well. He made hundreds of awesome recordings and mixes in that studio.