Actually, for occasional peaks that are causing the whole mix to be quieter, I often just manually go through the tracks and turn down the volume on the track which is causing the peak for a fraction of a second around that peak. This allows me to turn up the entire mix and still maintain the dynamics. It is basically manually compressing but with less potential artifacts since I am only altering one track rather than the whole mix and I have better control of the fade down and up in volume. A little more time, but a much better result.

https://www.stonemarmot.com
Stone Marmot
Nouveau retro pop-rock music
Listen to our latest song “Girl Germs” at:
https://soundcloud.com/stone-marmot/girl-germs
and its music video at