I should have clarified. This was after I mastered: EQ, multi-band compression, exciter, and limiter. So it has some fairly good mastering and healthy peak to average signal ratio... it was just that because it's a more ambient, film score type piece, it was peaking way below 0 dB, in fact the highest peak was around -4 dB. So, it seemed to me, raising it to close to 0 does nothing to affect dynamic range, in no way compresses, just makes the average signal level louder. I wondered if people always brought it up close to 0 before releasing, even in the case of more atmospheric music.