it’s probably me who misunderstood, i thought you had some stereo information to begin with in the signal.
but yes-- the ‘same file properties’ bit is important. the peak value of a signal will vary quite a bit if exported into a different samplerate for instance (brickwall limiting to 0dBFS is not really useful if you export to another samplerate as your peaks will be all over the place afterwards). sorry i can’t be of a more concrete help.