Thoughts on this?

I used to stress about gain staging, and setting proper levels, not clipping, all that jazz. At this point, I just focus on the Drum bus, bass bus, synth bus, and mix as a whole.

I'll occasionally solo an instrument if there's resonance. But other than that, I do all my arrangement first until the tracks done, I mix as I go so most EQ, compression, etc is done.

Then I'll focus on the "rivers" leading into the "ocean" master bus. When everything sounds cohesive or subjectively, I think it sounds good... then time to make it loud as fuck for social media.

I've just found my views suffer when it's not loud as hell without clipping.

Loudness wars be damned, if you're a content creator or advertising your music, maybe it's just a coincidence but the best traction is loud (preferably decent sounding) music for Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, etc (and yes I'm aware they turn it down automatically if too loud).

 

Yes, people just do use too much saturation stuff. That's why they want to reduce the levels. They just do not want this whole bunch of saturation every of their plugin produce.
That's basically gain staging in the digital era.
And afterwards they use some enhancers because now it sounds better again.
Gain staging saturation stuff.