it bugs the living shit out of me when I put on a studio recording, and the goddamn thing sounds thin, harsh and brittle...and levels are pounding zero, no matter what the dymanics are. funny, I hear that much more in studio recordings than the stuff we do, most tapers have the sense not to pound zeros like that. I do strive for levels at -2 to -1 during the very loudest passages, but imo overdriven tapes sound like ass. I've made that mistake myself. When I first picked up an mp-2 several years ago to run in front of my adk, it took me awhile to figure out not to run it anywhere near hot....as soon as I started running it well below zero, the brittle harshness went away. Conversely, the v2 can be run quite hot. It's a good question whether a "one box" can be run hot enough to achieve near zero without undesirables. I did run the mme hot as hell as a preamp with no noticeable issues.