Originally Posted by lasso

Why not try to give the man a straight answer or simply don't reply instead of trying to "school" him? Nothing more annoying when you really want to learn something and people go "find out for yourself"

If you're after "uber loudness", which you are if you're trying to match the RMS of modern commercial releases, most likely clipping will give you better results than compression and limiting.

Most of the stuff that I master is already compressed and limited at the mix stage, very often OVER compresed. But that will only get you so far with regards to loudness. Clipping is the way to go for loudness.

The loudest masters usually have two things in common: 1) the mix is suited for being loud - usually this has to with the loudest things in the mix being something that masks the distortion from clipping well. Drums are excellent for loudness, sustained guitars often sound awfull when clipped because the distortion gets very apparant. Then there's an EQ considaration: Ususally the louder masters don't have a lot of sub frequencies, because subs eat headroom for dinner. They also very often have a slight aggresivenes in the upper mids, which helps push the loudness.

Hope this helps a bit.