Master effects

[dirty_bass]

It's something I used to do but I found it lead to over compression and all kinds of nastyness , best thing to do is to try an leave the master channel as clear as possible and try for as good a mixdown as you can get without it. Will give you more headroom and dynamics to play with at the mastering stage if nothing else.

What he said.
I`m actually against self mastering altogether now.
The mastering stage is much better handled by a 3rd party who can be more objective.
I just don`t know who to send my stuff too, to do mastering swaps with.