Mastering

[amscheme]

Hey everyone, I know this is a super loaded question and whole courses could be taught on it but just wondering if anybody had any tips for me. I use Pro Tools 10 and have the Waves plug in bundle and been mixing and mastering my music but I can’t seem to get it as loud as “professional” mixes without it sounding like it’s distorted. My process is usually getting everything mixed as tight and loud as I can without individual tracks clipping and then I drag my master fader down so the fader doesn’t go up in the red at all through the song and then I’ll put the L3 Multi plug in on from the dynamics menu and I’ll use the high res cd master preset, which gets it decently loud but just not quite there. Any advice is appreciated.

Brandon