In my day when we made up digital masters , a digital 'over' meant you re-cued the tape and had another cut off the transfer , mix or what ever it was ,
nothing ever left the studio with a digital over ,
The kids nowadays , there immune to distortion ,so in the level wars ,standards have been allowed to slip ,
This idea that digital over is a form of level control akin to hitting an analog signal path hard , that the recording is allowed hit above 0dbfs ,who thought these people there trade FFS ?
I note the phrase people are intentionally using digital overload , intentionally misusing it, without a clue seems more appropriate .
So then the high end designers starts figure out the misuse and incorporates about 5 cents worth of components to implement a soft clip , for the high end customers who dont have a clue what their doing ,
Ive a simple rule of thumb for digital recording , if you start getting near 0db FS, back off the level FFS ,never ever intentionally clip the signal in the digital realm ,
Its no wonder modern pop music sounds like **** if turns the transients into a crap shoot.
The youth of today no no limit to tollerable distortion ,
Theres a quote somewhere back in time ,attributed to the BBC sound studios ,
words to this effect ,
the job of the engineer is to prevent distortions from the equipment becoming objectionable .