good ol' loudness...

[Jake_JW]

This is all just wrong. Adding gain before processing will just smash the damn thing into the limiter harder, reduce the dynamic range even more and not get those maximum peaks any closer to 0 because then limiter just won't let it happen.

And how the fuck does using a plugin that does nothing but add gain do anything different than the master fader? Answer: It doesn't! It doesn't reduce your risk of clipping. It makes no damn difference at all. You know where the max peaks are hitting, you know where you want them to be. Simple math will tell you how much gain you need to get there. Set the Master fader to that number and you're fucking done!

OP - saturation is distortion and distortion limits dynamic range. The "tape" part means mostly that there some EQ/filtering around the distortion.

'risk of clipping' was the wrong phrase to use (as you've pointed out) - my point was more about gain staging, hadn't had my coffee at the time.

I didn't say it did anything different, in fact I said it would work fine. I was suggesting an alternate solution that might be useful in future.
Obviously it would require you to adjust the thresholds/gains of your other processing to accomodate the change in level (didn't think I needed to spell that out). You'd need to move the threshold on the limiter up by the same amount you add elsewhere at the very least.

If your peaks are at a known level, then yes you can throw up the master fader, nothing will go wrong if you don't change anything else. But I don't think it's the best way to tackle the problem OP has, because it doesn't address the gain staging that got the track to that point in the first place. Each to their own, OP will be fine turning up the fader.

 

[andrushkiwt]

turning up fader = good. got it. lol. thanks all

 

[ashcat_lt]

Yeah, adding gain into the limiter and then raising its ceiling will probably do it, too, and might even be more "correct", but at this point as long as you're happy with how it sounds (!!!) and the general crest factor you're getting, and it just needs to be a little louder (or quieter) then I'd rather just tweak the master than go back and fuck with the plugins. One slider move vs two.

If you find yourself adding large amounts of gain at that master fader, you should definitely go back to your gain staging, but 3-6db ain't enough to bother with.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Using a proper mastering limiter removes any need to touch the master fader. All the control you need is in the plugin, designed in a way to make this whole process very convenient and relatively mindless. If you have to adjust the master fader you're doing it the hard way.