Hi Marc Clement, it's OK, I try to not give very technical feedback (instructions on how to fix the "problems" I hear) so we can simulate a true client-mixing engineer situation. If I'm a client that want my track mixed by someone else, then I shouldn't know how to mix, or that's how I understand this challenge. If I were too "generic", broad or non-technical please let me know!
Nonlinear, thank you for participating. I have to say I don't have "proper" monitors (read: professional enough ones) but just comparing the audio to my own mix and the rest of the participants' it sounded like that. Not a big effect but noticeable nonetheless, probably the saturation and compression really helped to get more loudness out of individual elements. In my tracks I lately try not to use much compression, and when I do it's always in parallel (with the TDR Kotelnikov one, amazingly nice). I also use transient designers for the drums when I need more/less attack or release, and sometimes I even limit some individual drum tracks if the transient is too much. In the master buss usually I have light multiband compression (which gives more presence to every part of the spectrum without squashing anything), then another parallel bus compressor and finally the limiter. I'm now aiming for -14 LUFS, although this track was made some more time ago and I don't remember exactly the settings. The punchyness in this kind of genres usually comes from the kick, and kick/clap combination, paired with some heavy pumping. That last element is pretty critical since you can keep both the drums and the rest of the big sounds at pretty high levels while having the full dynamics of the kick there. It's the mix really, mastering is just squashing a bit more the mix. That's my method though...