[DominicWyeth]

I dont wish to start a rant on loudness war - this is not the purpose of this post

...sorry just wanted to say that up front

recently a client asked me to master 3 tracks that were to be added to the end of an existing album (already mastered).

At present I have not been able to afford any outboard gear so I am mastering using a digital signal path (Protools).

I took the three tracks and ran them through BX Digital, Multiband Compressor TL Space, BX Solo, Massey mastering limiter

and then I use a level meter set to k14

I was happy with the job I had done and got some nice levels - bounced, had a coffee and checked it on a few differrent speaker systems - all good.

Then I compiled the album adding the three tracks to the other ones - HOLY CRAP - the other mastered tracks were so hot and so loud it hurt. I was no where near the audio level they were pushing - I had to limit the crap out of my songs almost to the point of squashing any musical performance to even get them close.

the other tracks were pushing +8 on a k14 scale.

at times I could hear distortion in the original tracks (and being the mix engineer previous;ly I knew it wasnt there) so I am thinking the original ME just pushed them crap out of them

but here is my question - Does a digital signal path limit the amount of gain you can get from a track. before it starts to sound horrible - I never want to be a ME that just makes it loud for clients.