As i perceive a clipped spike will sound rougher than a quietened one, i spend most of my time picking off the top few spikes in a track, de-amplifying them before amplyfying the entire track.
Imagine every clipped spike being de-amplified and no other spikes touched, could that not be made into a plugin ?
Many thanks for that link, another very useful looking plugin i probably would not have found without your reply. 