mastering should not be done in the home. You can even levels out and stuff but mastering is no joke and is a bit of a dark science. Get somone experienced to do mastering. It takes a lot more than just sticking the Waves Ultramaximizer on your track to master it properly.

Mixing Pop Vocals: ;)

If you wanna mix vocals in a pop stylee into your track then heres a handy tip. When you've eq'd and compressed the vocal to the desired level you'll be wanting to stick it in the mix with the rest of the tune. Start with the fader at the bottom so its silent. Push the fader up until the vocal is at an audible level in the tune. There is a point when the vocals start to sound too loud and sound like they're fighting with the mix. So obviously the thing to do is turn them down, but then they don't seem to be loud enough. So you push em back up and they just sound too loud and are really ruining you're lovely mix. Now heres the trick. Get the vocal up in the mix where its really ruining everything by being too loud, then turn it UP by about 3db and it will slot in to place perfectly PROVIDING you've done you're eq and compression properly. A good way to test the balance is by turning the volume of your speakers all the way down so its real super quiet and all you should be able to hear is the drums/beats and the vocal line hissing away. It seems unnatural and if you're not used to mixing music with vocals in it then it will seem REALLY weird, but it works and if you listen to most pop music down really quiet, like on the radio or something, you'll notice that most of it comes down to beats and vocals.

Probably not that relevant as most if us will chop up vocals and mix it like part of the beats, but yeah.. I thought it was interesting when I was shown this technique..