Of course, Offset Mode is going to be a lifesaver as well. I'm going to start using it on my projects from now on. Thanks for all the advice!
 

Use busses to mix instruments that belong together. There are no limits to the number of busses you can use, so why limit yourself in how you use them? As you mix instruments together, you can output busses to new busses (rather than master) to have more control over entire sections of a song. For example:
 
15 drum tracks -> Cymbal bus, Kick + Snare bus, Toms bus -> Drum bus -> Master
 
This way I can treat and/or raise/lower each of the middle three busses separately, then still adjust overall drum level before it hits the master bus. You can even go further and have the bass + drum bus output to another bus and you now have control of the rhythm section. And so on...
 
Regards,
Dan

So, a quick update on this. I'm doing an arrangement of a video game music piece for an upcoming fan-made "arranged" album. I had done a rough mix on the finished arrangement a month ago or so and just went back into the project to give it a proper mix. All of the tracks for the album will be professionally mastered so I didn't need to worry about overall volume. 

The mix sounded pretty thin to me in some parts, despite being happy with the arrangement. While I had Cake's tape saturation plugin used on a couple of my buses, I decided to throw it on every single instrument and just give each a small touch of tape saturation. Man! That really works wonders to fill out a piece and glue all the disparate instruments together. But, it of course raised the overall volume of the piece and was causing clipping at the loudest points. I should mention that I did adjust a few other elements of the mix (reverb, panning, EQ), but that tape saturation really did the trick in this particular case.

I created a new bus, called it 'premaster', routed all of the buses to it and turned that baby down so that the finished track peaked at around -6.0dB (since it'll be mastered later) and I was done. I can't believe I had never used at premaster bus before. Thanks again for all the suggestions, everyone. 

I don't understand why you need a "premaster" bus for this. You could just as easily lower the master bus by 6dB (or however much you need) and export that.

Sanderxpander
I don't understand why you need a "premaster" bus for this. You could just as easily lower the master bus by 6dB (or however much you need) and export that.

Isn't it considered good practice to keep the master bus at 0dB? 

However, in this particular instance, yes I could have just lowered the fader of the master bus by 6dB since I wasn't going to be doing my own mastering, and just exported that audio to be sent to be mastered.

But, in a normal situation, I would be doing my own mastering. In those cases, I would want to be able to lower the overall volume of all the tracks to prevent that clipping I was getting when the volume hit its peaks. I could do that by using the premaster. Then, I would bounce the new, non-clipping mix to a new track. I would then do my mastering on this track, applying my limiter, etc. with the master bus still sitting at 0dB where it should be.

I thought aslo that it is good practice to keep Master fader always at 0db.   But, if you need to pull down (or raise) the overall volume of a song (all tracks), would it make any difference to use a Pre-Master to do it (and keep Master at 0), or use the Master fader to do it?   Following on the comment about the saturation - I put a small amount of saturation on the Master Bus (just as a glueing effect) - if there are FX on the Master Bus, would this be relevant in choosing if to adjust up/down the overall volumne using Pre-Master or Master?

ULTRABRA
I thought aslo that it is good practice to keep Master fader always at 0db.   But, if you need to pull down (or raise) the overall volume of a song (all tracks), would it make any difference to use a Pre-Master to do it (and keep Master at 0), or use the Master fader to do it?   Following on the comment about the saturation - I put a small amount of saturation on the Master Bus (just as a glueing effect) - if there are FX on the Master Bus, would this be relevant in choosing if to adjust up/down the overall volumne using Pre-Master or Master?

Here's how I've been looking at it. 

Let's say you have all of your audio tracks separate (not all bounced down to one master audio track yet). You've already done all of your EQing, reverb, etc. The only problem is that you're getting some slight clipping. You decide to lower the master bus by the amount that you're clipping. Then with the master bus lowered, you select all of the audio tracks and bounce them to a new audio track that you plan on mastering. You then have to raise the volume of the master track back up to 0dB. Now, let's say you notice something in the mix that you want to change. You mute the master audio track that you bounced and move back to work on the separate audio tracks again. Well, you've moved the master fader back to 0dB so you'll have to lower it again in order to not get clipping. 

All of that was just a really wordy way of saying that it's easier just to have a premaster bus that you can leave alone after you've adjusted it. If you bounce between mastering and mixing like I do (I always find little things in the mix that I want to change a day or two later), then it's easier just to have all of the settings as they were before you bounced all of your audio tracks down.

skitch_84

Sanderxpander
I don't understand why you need a "premaster" bus for this. You could just as easily lower the master bus by 6dB (or however much you need) and export that.

Isn't it considered good practice to keep the master bus at 0dB? 

However, in this particular instance, yes I could have just lowered the fader of the master bus by 6dB since I wasn't going to be doing my own mastering, and just exported that audio to be sent to be mastered.

But, in a normal situation, I would be doing my own mastering. In those cases, I would want to be able to lower the overall volume of all the tracks to prevent that clipping I was getting when the volume hit its peaks. I could do that by using the premaster. Then, I would bounce the new, non-clipping mix to a new track. I would then do my mastering on this track, applying my limiter, etc. with the master bus still sitting at 0dB where it should be.

The fader on the Master only sets the final output level to disc/tape/whatever. If you're hitting the Master with a signal that's to hot you can't simply turn down the Master fader as any effect you may have on the Master bus will still be hit by the hot signal.
Even if you're not doing the mastering yourself you can still have effects on the Master bus. Your job as engineer/mixer/producer is to produce the sound that you want,  If that requires eq or compression or reverb on the Master then so be it.  The job of a Mastering engineer is to take the sound you've created and make it work for whatever distribution medium you may require, so whether you listen to it on CD or FM radio or 64bit MP3 it should always sound the way you heard it when you mixed it.  If you're expecting a mastering engineer to improve the overall sound and add "that little bit of magic"...  well that's stuff you should have done when you mixed it.
 
A pre-master bus gives a point of control at the front end of the Master. Think of it as an enhanced gain control on the Master input.  It's easier to control/adjust than the standard gain control, you get level meters so you can see exactly how hard the Master is being hit.  If you have any compression on the Master you get instant before/after metering just by placing the pre-master bus next to the Master.
 
There are folk that refuse to put any effects at all on the Master bus, in which case a pre-master appears to be a waste of screen space.  However, any processes intended to affect the entire mix (say, a global reverb or a filter sweep effect, or even just a touch of EQ) would have to go there or a pre-master.
 
You can chain as many busses as you like, what we call the "Master" is simply the point at which you've stopped processing the sound and have the finished article.