[coldtea]

>but VLC should be amplifying the output using level-limiting (hard-limiting), which would effectively bring all the quiet parts to be just as loud as the loud parts, instead of just digitally clipping the output.

That's compression, not hard-limiting. Hard limiting would leave the quiet parts quiet relative to the loud parts. It would only crush them if they were not enough dynamics in the first place.

[astral303]

So would compression. The implication is that after you hard limit, you also increase the overall volume, such that the limit threshold of -Xdb is now 0db. Otherwise, there is no point to hard limit.