I am completing my electronic "Dance?" album. I have gone through and read most of the posts about Mastering and how much room to leave for the mastering engineer.In my mix I am busing all the drums to a stereo fader and using the Waves L1 Ultramximizer at about 3-9 db of reductio. Bass sounds I am compressing pretty hard at about -8 of reduction on the trransients at a 4-6:1 ratio. Vocals about 3-6 db of reduction at 3-5:1 ratio. I am now asking: Is it a good practice to compress and limit everything individually pretty hard and leave the Master Fader with no 2 track limiting or compressing with about -5 db of headroom for mastering. I use a c4 and or L1 or L2 on the masterfader in and out of bypass to sort of get an idea of what the product might end up sounding like. I then of course take it off in the end once I am happy. The types of music I am doing sound extremely smashed and punchy. Kick, Bass, i.e etc. Also I got some advice to limit almost everything slightly to catch all the peaks and valleys. I engineer many types of music and don't always apply these methods of everything. I am just asking about, House, Techno, Hip-Hop etc. Or do the mastering engineers prefer you not compress/limit individual tracks much and they do the work to make it smooth and slam? Thanx to Robert for the advice earlier.