[emilano]

Yeah mastering is one of those things that's often very cloudily described in the media and everywhere really.

I'd say that mastering is really about making it sound good on all systems and about clearing up any tonal issues (eq or compression) that happened in the mix. Depending on how good the original mix was, mastering could involve extremely little or a whole lot of processing. That's why fresh ears are important, because if you are the one who caused the tonal issues in the first place, you're not likely going to fix them. As for getting it to sound good on all media, that often requires a very good sounding listening environment and several sets of excellent to crappy sounding speakers in your room. This costs lots of money. There are no rules. Multiband compression is only good if it sounds good on the song.

So, my recommendation would be this. If you have the money, let a professional master it. If you don't or if you have complete trust in yourself for this project then do this. Put the song through those plugins and play around with the settings. Use the waves presets (they're good)as starting points. Make liberal use of the bypass buttons and make sure you are actually making the song sound better. (you may want to play around and then come back to it a day later to see if it actually sounds better). Get rid of the low and high frequencies that are not played over the radio using the linear phase eq. When you think you are done, print out a 16 bit/44.1k CD of the song (no mp3). Then take the CD around with you with a little notepad. Play it in your car, play it on friend's stereos and boom boxes, etc...Take notes on what sounds bad on any of the systems. Then take it back to your studio and make the minor corrections. Rinse and Repeat.