Check out my latest podcast interview:

http://emusician.com/podcasts/

"and scroll down to the Bob Katz Podcast interview"

Excerpt:

"The biggest problem, since you brought up "the loudness wars", is the misconception that you have to 'try to make your mix sound 'loud'' in order to make it sound loud in the mastering. Actually the converse is true - the more compression and squashing and especially peak limiting that you try to put onto your mix, the worse it's going to sound and the less loud it's going to sound in the mastering. The best mixes that we get, that have the greatest potential to sound loud, retain much of their natural dynamics coming in, and then we can, in the mastering, make it sound louder...People forget that there are several components to loudness. One of the ways to make a record sound louder is distortion, but distortion is a form of compression, there's no question about that. Another way to make a record sound louder is through the RMS level, but that can make things sound very spongy or squashy. And the third way to make a record sound louder is to retain impact and 'snap'. You have to listen to make sure that there is a meaningful amount of transient or 'snappy', so to speak, information in the mix as well as, shall we say, 'fatness' and 'strength' from the RMS or the continuous part of the sound. If you don't a good balance of transients to continuous and full levels, you're not going to get a loud recording no matter who you send it to - you're just going to get a wimpy recording." - Bob Katz