I am finding the whole mixing and mastering subject quite confusing. In the professional world I think practices, methods and procedures are pretty well defined based on the client and style of music. But in the hobbyist, amateur, and prosumer areas things don't seem to be as clear cut even though in reality we should be trying to achieve the same results. See for me I guess if I was engineering my personal projects correctly by the time each song was finished it would be on a 16 bit finished cd that I just had to load into a cd creator program to make the finished cd compilation. Which I guess means I should be mixing and mastering each song with consistent methods and end results so they fit on the compilation with no issues. I burn my own cd's, this is just a hobby I'm not preparing a master to be mass produced or stamped. So I guess my thoughts are if you plan on sending your song or project out for professional mastering or mass duplication you may do things one way. If you are recording your song for a cd you plan on burning yourself for friends and relatives and are handling the project from start to finish you may do things a bit differently even though you are looking for similar results in the end. I don't know if any of this makes sense.