On my Mastering chain, I usually like to start out with Izotope. I may or may not use their initial EQ, but I always use their multiband compressor, imager, and bits of their harmonic exciter. For my brick wall, I like to use fabfilter's pro-L. Expanding the "advanced" window gives you some really nitpicky parameters that help minimize transient loss while making your track sound really damn loud (if you're into that kind of thing).
On the multiband compressor, I mainly utilize the first (lowest) and third (second to highest) bands. On the the low one, a moderate ratio around 2:1 helps to smooth out the relationship between my kick/sub while not completely crushing it. On the third band, I like to use a pretty harsh ratio, something to the tune of 4:1. This really helps get the crisp, in your face sound and will do wonders for your snare. For the other bands, I use moderate compression as I see fit.
The main use of the imager is to take anything thats under around 200Hz and put it in mono. As long as you're good about keeping a clean low end, you shouldn't have much stereo activity down their anyway, but it's still good to do, especially if you're like me and enjoy using subs that have wide overtones.
The Harmonic exciter is definitely something to be careful with. I recommend getting familiar using an exciter like the aphex vintage exciter (waves) on an individual track basis to get a better idea of how excitement like that affects the sound before you throw it on your master track. It should add a little more brightness to the track, just be careful not to go overboard with it.
With the final limiter, I like to boost the track to where the Pro-L is putting some reasonably harsh gain reduction on it, then adjust the attack until I hear some of the transients come back through. This usually happens somewhere between 5s and 6s. The release I try to set so that I minimize the amount of pumping I hear, usually around 6s but this varies a lot track to track. The visualizer can be pretty helpful in helping you find that sweet spot. The lookahead and channel link controls are useful but not nearly as important as setting your attack and release!
Lastly, ill take fabfilter's Pro-Q and sweep the frequency range with it. This EQ is nice because you can solo each band, making it a lot easier to find problem areas, especially because at this point in the chain the track is quite loud, and boosting and sweeping just isn't quite as accurate. I'll make some moderate adjustments with this EQ, then the track is ready to be exported!
There are a bunch of different ways to go about reducing a tracks dynamics and no two people will do it exactly the same. While this method works for me, please note that I am self taught and always looking to learn new ways to go about reaching my desired sound. Any advice/ critique is greatly appreciated!
