I use a peak limiter a lot. I don't mean a lot as in doing a lot of limiting, but I use it often. On analog tape the "spike" peaks were fine. The tape distorted and compressed those little peaks almost the same way the human ear does it, so it sounded very natural, and more alive. Stupid digital can't handle it
, so it crackles or squawks. We can set the levels lower and still have better signal to noise ratio, but you still need to hit the tracks hard to get a strong master. So the hard limiter will take those 4-5 times per track that are generating the clip warnings (or real clips) and hack them down without the unwanted effect of compression. Unless you want the track compressed, then by all means....But then you can raise the level of the track by 2-4db sometimes.
But it also sounds like you're not mastering the final mix with T-racks or whatever, because you'd be in control at that point of your overall master level. I've mixed some songs weak because the individual tracks had wide dynamic range, and I wanted that to come out even though I might've compressed the final mix 3:1 or so, and boosted it then. The variance between instruments was preserved. Other "wall of sound" songs will be mixed hot and have more "per track" compression to lock everything in its place in the mix the whole song through.
