Running your 2-bus full slick

With modern productions aimed towards clarity and heavier bass IME it would be surprisingly difficult to work without a specific methodology. On multiple occasions I've heard decently recorded and mixed tracks that had been slammed against a limiter like Ozone and the results are always absolutely dire. It thins out the bass which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to achieve nowaday's, what seemed like balanced frequencies in a mix now starts to clash as we reduce the dynamics and raise the general volume, levels overall just become unbalanced in context etc. and ultimately it just ends up like some weirdly bright, mushy, overly distorted bedroom production.

I can always tell when someone does this and you know why? Decades ago when I was learning I did the exact same to try and compete. One thing I've noticed now, especially after streaming services started to normalise music is just how loud those tracks were, although back then this was normal, the only difference is their's sounded right(ish).

Most modern professional producers / mixers that I've seen, watched or youtubed simply don't approach it this way. It's usually a subtle stacking effect, the amount of times I've heard I'll just add a clipper here, or a multi-band saturator etc. on just about everything really. The end results can be great however they've essentially mastered the song on an individiual track basis and the problem with that methodology for me is it can be very difficult to troubleshoot when you have 5 - 15 plugins on every single track. As others have said it's easy to overdo as well.

The other flow is you essentially work backwards, start with a mastering limiter > compressor > EQ based upon a tested approach. There's plenty of well recorded raw tracks out there available from various mixing tutorials to test with. Once you have a base line then you mix into it without trying to trip up the mastering limiter, the advantage of this methodology is you're not just dumping everything on a single limiter to deal with, you're actually working on percieved loudness as it should be. This is a smoke and mirrors game, something that sounds loud might not actually be that loud.