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Originally Posted by lucey  Tom, as far as level ... the more heavily compressed and limited a thing, especially with clipping, the more obvious some of these differences can be, or not, and they may show up better with nicely recorded dynamic material. Ultimately, good recording and mixing quality is more important than the level of the masters IMO. |
Agreed Brian particularly when clipping, though some of the distortion can be more easily masked in a dense mix. I feel that the nasty side effects of quantization distortion are contrasted more in "organic" types of music than say a Metal or Punk song that has been brought up to extreme level.
In some cases some may even argue that additional distortion is s good thing. I once had a Metal band that ran their final mix through a distortion pedal for effect, as well as clients that purposely severely clip and/or truncate individual tracks or parts of songs for creative reasons or to add additional harmonics. In these cases truncation might be seen as "sounding better" in a comparison.