Yes, I think we are on the same page, here. In general I think this is very nice and practical and it probably results in higher sound-quality when sending audio between processes.

However, I also think it is the same thing Tomasz Kaye found; When something generating extreme amplitudes happens, like a unstable filter "exploding", while we are on sensitive headphones plugged into such a system, turning down the volume to a comfortable level won't help against that explosion. Our ears will get the blast at the full volume the hardware dac can muster.

For that reason I think it may still be beneficial to employ a limiter. Just to state the obvious in case it helps save somebody's hearing; in cases like that a compressor set to some reasonable value like a 1:8 ratio won't help. The max of the floating point range is so big that turning it down to a 8th of the original volume will still be extremely loud.

We talked about that before, but hearing damage isn't always curable, so I thought I'd talk about it again.

Yours,

Kas.