Legend has it that most of the damage to Death Magnetic was done at the mix stage, not the mastering stage. Master buss compression is absolutely standard pract

Legend has it that most of the damage to Death Magnetic was done at the mix stage, not the mastering stage. Master buss compression is absolutely standard practice during mixing. It lends cohesion. Unless you listen to a lot of completely amateur recording, almost all the recorded music you've heard used master buss compression. On the other hand, it's quite easy for a mix engineer to strap a hard limiter across the buss mix. That's what Metallica did. If the record reaches the mastering engineer with only a couple db of headroom, their hands are tied.