I never use the curves or the soft limit; I just run it normally. I usually have it bouncing yellow, and if it bounces up to red once or twice in the show, it will not kill me. The MiniMe can take one hell of a hot signal without clipping. I find that I really don't need a lot of gain with it, but it depends on the show. For large shows in the sheds, I will have the knobs at about 9:00; for smaller club shows, it goes up to about 11:00, but it all depends.