There was a guy over at FAWM this year that had wonderful sounding recordings and they were super loud! But they didn't seem overly compressed at all. I asked how he got things so loud, but so clean and he said:
Thanks so much for the comments on "My Mistake". It is cool to have some feedback as it is definitely a little less palatable in a mainstream sense. In terms of recording, engineering and mastering: I am using pro tools 10.7 (going to switch to 11 very soon) I record at 96 kHz floating 32 bit resolution this does make a huge difference anyone who tells you otherwise simply is not listening to the harmonic series and overtones in their recordings. Then I use a combination of IK Multimedias T-racks master plug-in with the new Steven Slate dynamic FX mastering plug-in in the master fader. The only place that I change the resolution to 16 bit 44100 kHz is the final master and those plug-ins really allow me to get my masters as loud and fat as a commercial mix. I am going to check out your tunes this morning and I will give you some feedback! Any questions on recording and I will be glad to help if I can, it is kind of my thing.
Recording at the higher resolutions is all about having "headroom" to compress without affecting dynamics. Sort of off the topic of video vs. audio, but I always feel the need to interject something -- especially when I don't know what I am talking about (ha, ha). I switched to 44.1/24 bit recording and I haven't noticed any differences yet (LOL!).
EDIT: Here's a link to his fawm page:
http://fawm.org/fawmers/lenigmusx1/ and here is one song:
http://fawm.org/songs/38913/