What limiter are you using, anyway? Not all limiters are made equal IMO.
And don't rely too heavily on the limiter. Most are not made to take much abuse; merely tame the stray peaks. If your limiter is constantly reducing gain, it will sound like crap. If the release is too short, it will sound like crap.
BTW, before I go any farther, your mix doesn't have to be smashed to heck to sound good on the radio. The FM stations will do plenty of smashing for you. In fact, some of my old lightly-mastered songs sounded awesome when they were on the radio, even compared to the mainstream songs that came before and after. A lot of times, overcompressed stuff sounds a little poopier when played over the radio.
OK, back to self-mastering. I don't know what you are doing to your mixes, but don't count on finding a preset that works for you. I wouldn't even bother with all-in-one mastering presets at all. The program has no idea what your mix needs. You need to be able to hear what needs to be changed (this is the hard part of self-mastering), and then you need to know exactly how to make the changes for yourself. Here is a simple method I might suggest. First of all, have a few reference CDs handy; check back to them throughout the process. Take your cleanest, least abusive EQ and start a high pass filter at 20Hz, and see if you can move it up any higher without messing up the bass. Play with different slopes if you have the option. Or you could see if a more gentle low freq shelf starting around 40-50Hz sounds better. Next, dig around in the low mids (100-450 area) and see if there is any mud you can dip out with a db or 2 of EQ. Play with the width (Q) of the cut and see how wide or narrow the cut can be. Next, move to the mids (750-2kHz area) and see if your mix needs a narrow cut somewhere or a little bit of a broad Q boost. Probably going to be one or the other. Next, you can try messing around in the 3kHz-12kHz range, but this area can be dangerous if abused. I'll just leave that one alone.
OK, now put that through your nicest compressor; start with a ratio of 2:1, attack of perhaps 10ms or so, and Auto release if you have it. Bring the threshold down to where you can see gain reduction of maybe 3-6 db, but it isn't making the music pump too stupidly. Now play with your ratio and see what happens with less and with more. Threshold may need to be adjusted as well. Also, make sure you bring up the makeup gain so that the compressed signal has the same apparent volume as the bypassed signal. Makes comparing easier.
After this, put on your coolest sounding shelfing EQ (maybe Pultec or linear phase) and give it that shiny sound with a fairly steep high shelf boost at 16-22kHz. You can also try making this shelf with a normal bell-curve boost that peaks at like 22-24kHz. You want to make sure that the boost is a bit steep so that the harsher 3-12kHz range isn't getting boosted too painfully. Now do some careful listening to the bass range and see if you need more or less bass relative to your ref CDs. May need to take it to the car to check too. If adjustment is needed, use a gentle low shelf starting at wherever (80-250Hz?) to raise or lower the overall bass content if needed.
NOW, throw your fanciest limiter on the master buss (UA Precision Lim, Waves L2), preferably not multiband, and raise the gain until you get lights bouncing on and off on the gain reduction. THE GAIN REDUCTION LIGHTS ON THE LIMITER SHOULD NOT BE CONSTANTLY ON THROUGHOUT THE MIX! NOT EVEN THE FIRST LITTLE LIGHT! OK, nuff said on that. If you have control over attack and release, you will prolly want the fastest attack available, and Auto release. If you have to manually adjust release, beware of fast settings as this will cause distortion in your mix. Peak level should hit -.5 to 0.0 db depending on your preference. I do -0.1
Who the heck am I? just another schmuck who has learned a few things and done a few things. Nothing major-label, but some of my work for people has been mass replicated. Hope this rediculous-long post at least gives you some avenues to look into. These techniques are guaranteed to not work all of the time.
Gawd I must be bored.
). Then throw in heavy limiting to pull the signal back just enough to turn the clip indicators off. Your recording will have an extremely high RMS and will be LOUD. It will also sound lousy.
