DANGER: Do not go crazy and try to win the loudness wars with this or your mix will suffer. If you already have a nice blend of plugins handling other types of compression at the track and busses, then this can be the last bit of push to get you to a decent mix.

People with tons of high end gear and/or plugins will use it for reference mix dailies and never on the final mix, so if you're that perfectionist, skip it or relegate it to this position. If you are a musician or producer on a budget, then this can stand in for much more expensive bits of kit, and as long as you don't push it too hard, you will like the results better.

My suggestion is to never try to go for more than 6db of boost unless your material somehow magically doesn't get messed up when you push it further. If you plan to send your final mix to a real mastering house, then either skip it or use it in very subtle ways with the Dithering option turned OFF! If you dither prior to sending it to a mastering engineer, you've sabotaged their efforts before they even get a chance. If however mastering is not in the equation and you need to make do, this will get you over the hump of what's required to get decent sound into an online streaming format.

Get L3 Multimaximizer by Waves and learn how to use the plugin with Ableton Live, Logic, GarageBand, and FL Studio for free. “ The L2 Ultramaximizer has quickly become my choice for stereo bus compression; it seems to have just the right amount of ‘glue’ to make the overall track sound punchy, but not too ‘mashed’ as to be oversaturated and sucked of life.

It is a useful and affordable tool, if you don't abuse it.

The heart of the L2 plug-in is the proprietary brick wall look-ahead peak limiter algorithm plus Waves IDR (Increased Digital Resolution) dithering technology, now with ninth-order noise-shaping. With 48-bit internal processing, high-quality re-quantization performance to 24, 22, 20, 18, and 16-bit outputs, plus the Waves ARC (Auto Release Control) technology, the L2-Ultramaximizer plug-in can give you the ultimate sound and power!

* 48-bit internal processing. * High Quality Re-quantization to 24, 22, 20, 18, and 16-bit.

* IDR (ninth-order noise-shaping). * ARC (Auto Release Control technology). * Full 48-bit fixed-point processing (dual precision) for true 24-bit dithered output.

* Stereo use only.