Ok, that definitely makes sense (damn you, Greg, for making sense!). In this mix, I just threw a generic compression setting on the stereo bus, mainly to get the volume up, so it's definitely not an optimized setting. I'll be removing those settings and sending the dry stems over to Jan Ohlhorst for mastering before it goes on the album, so I didn't really spend any time trying to find the sweet spot.
In general, I'm between the proverbial rock and hard place, because I want commercial loudness, but then parts like the breakdown won't get the dynamic range they'd naturally have. This is probably not something I should admit, but I think I'm ok with that tradeoff.
I'm more concerned about the sizzling, almost distorted vocal sound you mentioned, and/or the HF weirdness that PI mentions. I have an exciter on the vocal track, because I was trying to get the vocals a little more out front and "clear" sounding, so maybe I'll start there to see if I've just gone too far with that. The weirdness with the hats is probably also the result of another calculated tradeoff that I always make - to correct some timing issues on the drums tracks. It works pretty well in general, but the overheads are what suffer the most with that, and there are usually some artifacts left over that I just can't seem to get 100% "fixed" after the timing correction. Again, for me, the timing is more important than audio perfection of the overhead tracks. Of course I'd prefer to have it all, but it's a compromise I have to make
As always, thanks for taking the time to listen and to provide such helpful and thoughtful feedback!
Very Best,
Dave