Chregg
 
+1000 treat mixing and mastering as separate processes, 2 different hats

That's another good point, yeah, that I'd not really touched on. If you're still twiddling with the mix, then your mind is not properly in "big picture" mode.
 
 

I have been known to put Ozone on the master buss on occasion. Its a cheat to me and I don't think its the best way to do things but like many I will rush the process because it can be done. I do have my own mastering Sonar template I use to properly master a song. Its just sometimes fun to see what one can do with Ozone on the master buss of a mix.  The template has about a dozen plugins all turned off except the ones for analysis and I engage each as needed. This also includes some PC plugins too.   
 
In this case its a situation of do as I say not as I do. LOL 

Good stuff...thanks guys!

I have to side with John too. I do sometimes slap a Waves L2 on the master bus for loudness and peak limiting but to actually master your own music is almost a contradictio in terminis. You mix until you think your mix sounds good. The mastering engineer who gets your song checks things like "is the overall sound too harsh or boomy" and "how is the stereo image" and "how does it compare to other tracks in the genre". This is all stuff you're doing during your mix phase too. The point is to have someone else with a fresh look and a lot of experience check these things. It makes no sense to me to first mix to where you think it sounds great and then slap on another compressor and EQ and think that you can suddenly have a fresh perspective and an objective ear.

Yeah. When I'm mastering my own mixes, which comes up for largely budgetary reasons, I like to finish the mixing, leave them alone for a week or two, and then do the mastering as a completely different step, in a completely different frame of mind.
 
I think there's been some muddying of the waters in recent years about exactly what "mastering" means, mind you. If you want master bus compression effects on your mix, then by all means, do that in your mix. That's not mastering, though, or at least not in my book.Going back and forth between you master bus processing and your general processing... well, that's mixing.
 
Mastering is preparing the final files for duplication and digital delivery, mindful of the context (ie: is this an album / ep / single track / for use in film / something else). This will often involve some sonic changes, but ideally, we should be delivering an optimised version of what's already there, not "correcting" it.
 
As a matter of course, I generate a vinyl master, a CD master, and a download / streaming master. I also derive mp3 files from the streaming master. Sometimes people might not want all of those, so of course I check. Have delivered three albums for vinyl this year already though, interestingly enough.

Some people ask whether you need a mastering engineer if your mix is where it should be. My usual answer is I've never a heard a mix that a good mastering engineer couldn't improve to some degree. As a result I always used professional mastering engineers until 1989, when the mastering engineer for many projects (Randy Kling) said "You don't need me any more." My mixes had (finally!!) reached a point where they needed just a little EQ and dynamics touchup, so more and more, I'm doing that in the master bus and generating a master, then using Studio One to assemble the masters (if applicable) into an album, balance levels, check for flow, etc.
 
However, because I work on projects in parallel, I have the luxury of being able to leave projects alone for an extended period of time. I'll take my mixes and put them in a portable player, and listen to them at various times. If I hear something that bothers me, I know that it will only bother me more in the future if I don't fix it. So I go back to the project, make a tweak, run off another mix and again, listen over time. If I leave a few weeks between listens it's like being able to have a fresh set of ears because I've heard so much other stuff in between. 
 
For example I've done one more iteration since posting the preview to my "Neo-" album. Over the course of doing the album, I tended to use less and less vocal processing; so two songs done early on with more processing sounded out of place in context. I went back and changed the processing so the vocals had a more "direct" sound, which I think improved the album's impact.
 
If nothing else, this illustrates that everyone has different techniques that work for them. But, if someone was to choose only one way of working, I'd recommend John's 
 

John T

Chregg
 
+1000 treat mixing and mastering as separate processes, 2 different hats

That's another good point, yeah, that I'd not really touched on. If you're still twiddling with the mix, then your mind is not properly in "big picture" mode.
 
 

i think people loose perspective working like that

I know I do. It's important to manage your own cognitive biases and weaknesses.

i mix into compressors in every mix, for the glue, thats it

I don't do anything at all on the master bus, myself. I know some people really like to mix into a master bus compressor, but I personally find it too confusing and unpredictable. Not saying it's a bad thing, just my brain doesn't work that way.
 
What I *do* do is have a lot of things going into buses other than the master bus, and do compression / parallel compression on certain groups of sounds. I like to have a parallel bus with kick, snare and bass, for example. I'll often have a compressor on a backing vocal bus, as well as compressors on the individual vocal tracks. But compression for "glue" is all done before hitting the master bus.