After the main editing process is complete, but before beginning the mastering, engineers often include another editing stage, this time with the aim of manually compressing the larger transient peaks. This can prove to be a far more transparent technique than using a limiter, even though it is a little time consuming.

By looking at the waveform display of each complete song it is easy to see any particularly dominant transients, and Ithen simply reduce each of these by 3 or 4dB by editing immediately before and after the transient and winding the level down as necessary. If done carefully, the modifications are completely inaudible, but the peak-to-average ratio can be improved dramatically, making it possible to raise the overall level of the track by another 4dB or so. Again, it is a case of using your ears to judge how much manual compression is needed and acceptable, but the waveform display in your editing software can be a helpful guide.