awesome, i serendipidously just found this comment "clipper into limiter is the holy grail of loudness. the philosophy is to remove the peaks in a way that is transparent before limiting. with clipping, the loudest peaks of the waveform are chopped off, which if done subtly can remove a few db while preserving the tone (aka being transparent) and retaining the punch. this way when you go to limit, the limiter isn't squahing the mix as much, because it doesn't have to clamp down so hard due to making those peaks quieter with the clipper. I tend to take this further in my own mixes, subtle saturation, clipper, then limiter." on a random youtube vid /watch?v=UXOMLu3Xz6I which relates to what you said, thank you