I’ll quote the expression, “the obvious became apparent”. I am a newcomer to recording technology and had been warned to make sure my “gain-staging” was kept in order. This went over my head and so I just plowed along producing hyper-gained recording files. My ears never knew the difference. But in playing close attention to the channel and master fader output meters, I noticed that everything had excessive gain.
So over the next few weeks I am planning to remix the recordings and quiet them down. The resulting audio quality will be much less aggressive.