So is there a particular kind of distortion that is better than another? If I just crank up the channel mixer, it seems like it'll be a lot different that if I use Saturn to beef the sound up until it touches the red.

There's no better things when It comes to particular idea

Hey Ethan! nice to see you here dude. I actually just found out about the whole clipping individual channels/floating point thing not too long ago and it's improved my mixes quite a bit

whats up man! yeah clipping is something i do often. i just wanted to know how everyone else uses it since ive pretty much just experimented with it until i found what i liked.

I rather using crank the gain inside saturation or soft-clip plugins, it's easier for me to gain-stage everything after than actually clipping the channel. Not saying that actual clipping sounds bad.

This is largely how I gain stage as well. I like to throw a clipper (or the shittiest sounding brickwall limiter) on my master to get levels right at the outset of a mix. I figure if I can get a good sounding balance with the worst sounding plugins, then it'll sound even better using my good plugins.

it's a style more than anything.

i think this is what i stand for. well done

A lot of people clip their masters, as long as you tightly control what parts of your mix are hitting the red it sounds good. ramzoid hardclips all of his tracks and they sound dope because his mixing is precise.

I really like to add a small bit of clipping on the master. Think of it as the very final but of glue. On individual busses, use saturation instead if you need distortion.

I think there's missunderstanding about what do you mean by clipping.
If we really speak about clipping (= hitting 0 with no limiter dynamic processing) then it's imho really bad idea on the master channel. Your mix can get played by something with shitty interpolation and you'll hear heavily distorted mess.
This same clipping on individual channels is funny, becouse if your DAW works with floating zero point values (it probably does), going above zero has no audible effect apart from volume change. ...and the meters get red.
If you mean clipping as a form of distortion (intentionally, made with waveshaper for example, may be with some filters to tame it), then yeah, it can be cool sounding. But be careful about the terms. "Clipping" is technical term that in recording industry usually means a problem.