Please help me out with loudness and critic my mix!

[snerklepod]

Hi all, pretty new to this whole mastering thing. Im starting to get a little happier with my mixes (not really lol) and wanted to try out mastering as id like to finally release some material. Currently im using Ozone 5 for that and a the bombadier buss compressor. My issue is limiting/maximizing i cant get my tracks loud enough unless i increase the input volume causing everything to sound a tad muddy. If someone could help me out here and explain to me why my mixes are still quite when i attempt to maximize my track id appreciate it.

Heres the first mix/master, without the input volume raised, which IMO sounds better in terms of clarity https://soundcloud.com/tsukihime/another-bullet-master-1

heres the second, In which i achieved more loudness but feel as if i lost clarity, https://soundcloud.com/tsukihime/another-bullet-master-2

Also im fairly new to this and am not too sure how to apply a buss compressor to a master track.....

Thanks all

 

[Daybreak]

In terms of mastering for loudness, I have found that the best way to do this is just get rid of all the junk that isn't supposed to be there. This can be done in the mixing stage by highpassiing/lowpassing all the different instruments, bot not too much, otherwise they will sound too thin. One thing I like to do - And I do this A LOT - Is, put an EQ on a track, set the Q-worth to pretty high, my EQ doesn't go higher than 10, and then just sweep around and try to find stuff that just shouldn't be there, and take them out. I do this on my master track too, it's a really good way, in my opinion, to get rid of the junk and get a loud mix. After this I simply put a maximizer on the master track, and try to make the track as loud as possible without sacrificing too much dynamics!

 

[snerklepod]

hmm yeah, i get that specifically though what should i do for my problem? Like when i start to lower the threshold in the limiter of ozone i can only go so far before it starts to clip in there. Then the whole mix ends up turning to shit, the snare is whats causing a spike in dbs too. How do a fix that im compressing it pretty hard right now too

 

[bryan_kilco]

the snare is whats causing a spike in dbs too. How do a fix that im compressing it pretty hard right now too

Have you tried running a clipper on the snare bus, drum bus, and maybe even master?