Quick mastering on the 2-buss

I don't use a 2-bus limiter per se.. I slam the level into my mix-down converters to shave transients. Everything else is additive compression in the mix, including a light touch by the 2-bus compressor. I use the shaving as a way to get the level up further without affecting the meat of the mix. As for a setting.. I push it until it starts to crackle, then back off until it doesn't! If I can't get it to a certain loudness without apparent distortion, then I know my balance is messed up somewhere in the mix (usually too much mud in the lows and low-mids).

My thought is that I want the final mix as close to how it's supposed to be on the album when it leaves my hands.

I'll admit that some of that comes from defensively controlling the final product, mainly from experiencing poor mastering in the past. Unfortunately it seems that when a mix gets mastered and turns out great, it's the mastering engineer's skills that get praised.. When the master turns out bad, it's the mix engineer that gets blamed.

I always leave most of my go-to gear inserted, with settings that I know get me to a certain point. From there I usually just adjust levels into the gear first and resort to drastic setting changes as a last resort. I feel that it gets me closer to the final mix faster and leaves less chance of me 2nd guessing everything.

What I've found is that a lot of bands talk about getting things mastered, but ultimately they just want something loud and bright.  I can strap a sontec on the 2-bus to give it some more top end, and push the mix until it's loud, and that usually completely satisfies them.

I'm also talking about hardware too.  I find that it's a lot more forgiving when you push it than plugins are.  

Depends on what kind of music it is, but if I'm competing I usually put whatever buss compressor I'm using on the lowest threshold with the A.O.M limiter behind it and start with the vocal and drums. Once I get those I'll pull the buss compressor into reduction and the limiter maybe knocking like 1 or 2db from that starting point. Then I'll mix the rest of the song and at the end I'll go as far as I can for that style of music with the compressor and again, depending on the music the RMS might be between -11db to -8db.

I always print my mixes, so that mastering chain lives on my monitoring output, when I print back into the DAW I get a totally uncompressed mix that can go to the ME. It may be coincidence because I've never aimed at getting the print mix at -6 on the peak, but that's about where it's at.

Don't be afraid of using a little buss EQ either when you're near done, when I'm mixing I'm usually flipping back and forth between whatever commercial stuff is near what I'm doing and in the end if I am grooving off my mix but it's needs a little something added or taken away that can be a very quick and efficient way to get the DONE seal.

Ok so I work in rap, trap, Trapsoul, R n B, Pop, top 40 and usually the final master is pushing -6 to -5 RMS with a DR of no more than 5.5-7.5. I know it's slammed and super loud. However, every reference I get is -5 RMS and that's what the client expects. I experiment with bus compression and am finding that if I don't mix into it I don't like it. I am hoping HW bus compressors are different. Idk something about SW bus compressors affecting the LF / low end/ bass I can't stand it, I find I like really short releases like 1-50 MSec. and have found L1 to be my friend in these type of mixes. I Use L1 into Pro L or Ozone Maximizer. Yep two limiters, so if my mix is peaking at -7 I take baby L1 (no dither one) and bring down threshold -6, then take my fader n drop it same amount to see what is effecting. Most of the time when balances are good it's sounds same but better with the added sauce from L1. After baby L1, we are probably peeking around -1 to -.5 & this is where Ozone or pro L will come in the play to get the final overall ISP limiting and volume. Alternatively, when Limiter sauce is not needed, I use clip gain on the mix print to be it to -.1 dbfs and then use Ozone for a slight limiting (1-3 db) but mainly
using the Maximizer for ISP. If I don't actively pursue the references I get feedback like:

"my record doesn't sound like so and so",
"something is missing, the popular artist record hits harder",
" I turned the bass and treble up in my car all the way to make it louder like my favorite song but it didn't sound good, but I took the bass and treble off and turned it up louder and I liked it better ",
"My iPhone earbuds are at max volume can we make the song louder, my friends says he can't hear it as good on his earbuds"
" this doesn't sound like a Beyoncé record it needs more edge" " we have to sweep the listener of their feet in the first 20 seconds" -> stuck with me good little pop/ top 40 jewel.


Bus compressors :
ITB, I use waves SSL bus comp, waves h comp, api2500, TDR Kotelnikov ( don't trust the GR meter on most of these at all, it will say I'm taking off -3Db but other meters / peak measurement is doesn't correlate ) I have the vertigo vsc2 and find its probably the most flexible bus comp and i would use that all the time if it were able to run on my stable system but no, UAD ties plugs to OSX so me keeping my stable system ( lion OS X ) means no new UAD plugs for me since 5/2014 ( 1176mk2 came out then ). I keep meaning to try the UAD SSL bus comp.

Link below to a -6 RMS track.

m.soundcloud.com/chaseutb/fire-to-da-flame-scaac-chaseutb-prod-by-chaseutb