Yes- I belong to the crowd of 'I master my own material' too. With all the tools to do that these days, it usually gets most people into trouble. It really is a better idea to get your work professionally mastered. They have the ears, the monitors, and the room to really get it done. Your 'mastered' versions sound louder, true. That doesn't really equal better by default though. The best most of us can do who aren't professional ME's is bring up the volume, through compression and/or limiting. And most times, just THAT gets the material into trouble. One false move with that and you have a squashed to crap track- not exactly great. Then there's adjusting the eq- another pit fall. About the best any of us can do is to apply those things in moderation. And hopefully, the MIX is so darn good that nothing BUT moderation is needed by the time you reach the mastering stage.

We try, and with luck we survive without too much damage. But ME's, most of us simply aren't.

Dan

My YT Channel- http://www.youtube.com/user/dfizzbom