ok......you drove me to this 
Here's a little comparison converter-clipping (Apogee AD-16x)...it's pushed rather hard, usually I would probably use less clipping, but this is just for comparison.
I was too lazy to incorporate the software clippers in this test, but there's an "unclipped" file in 24bits, so you can do that yourself (and upload it here).
here's the unprocessed mixdown
raised the output of the C2 by ca 4dB (hard clip 4dB)
and the same but with "soft limit" enabled on the Apogee
and for shits and giggles here's a "almost taking the piss" mastering with softclip, hardclip, multiband comp and limiting from the finalizer and then some more limiting from a plugin...well, you can tell what that does to the snare and overall clarity of the mix....but it's loud
(it's actually really close to the actual final master)
I didn't adjust levels or normalize or anything, so the volume differences are the differences that come from the actual clipping.
for the visual oriented people: here is how it looks:
EDIT: I have forgotten about the delay compensation on the finalizer file...you might wanna nudge it

Here's a little comparison converter-clipping (Apogee AD-16x)...it's pushed rather hard, usually I would probably use less clipping, but this is just for comparison.
I was too lazy to incorporate the software clippers in this test, but there's an "unclipped" file in 24bits, so you can do that yourself (and upload it here).
here's the unprocessed mixdown
raised the output of the C2 by ca 4dB (hard clip 4dB)
and the same but with "soft limit" enabled on the Apogee
and for shits and giggles here's a "almost taking the piss" mastering with softclip, hardclip, multiband comp and limiting from the finalizer and then some more limiting from a plugin...well, you can tell what that does to the snare and overall clarity of the mix....but it's loud

I didn't adjust levels or normalize or anything, so the volume differences are the differences that come from the actual clipping.
for the visual oriented people: here is how it looks:


EDIT: I have forgotten about the delay compensation on the finalizer file...you might wanna nudge it