"Pseudo mastering" making the low end too loud [SOLVED]

I've watched a couple of tutorials on "pseudo mastering" and gave it a try. I used the exciter and stereo spread plug-ins to good effect. However, when I tried to make my track louder, it also made the kick, bass guitar and toms significantly louder than they were in the original mix. Why? Am I doing something wrong with the "mastering", or is there something wrong with my mix?

 

I tried making it louder using both the adaptive limiter and the gain plug-in, same problem with each one.

 

A related problem is I can't find a comprehensive guide for how to do this sort of amateur mastering in logic. Just a couple of youtube videos, and all the articles I've found are really vague.

 

Thanks for any help you can give!

Edited April 22, 2015 by Jessica_X

first of all, id stay away from exciters and stereo spreading on your master if you don't know what you're doing. second of all, if turning your track up louder makes your mix fall apart, then your mix isn't good to begin with. using a gain plugin and just simply turning the volume up will give you the same mix just louder. going into a limiter is a different story. this will change your mix if squashed a lot and if your mix is terrible to begin with. if you have random peaks all over the place, the limiter will limit those making your mix sound unbalanced. before you even attempt mastering, i would recommend you work on your mix. 99.999999999999% of the time, its the mix that's the problem. but at the end of the day, if you're getting too much low end by turning the volume up, your mix has too much low end to begin with and you just can't hear it when it's at a lower volume.

This should help: Poor man's mastering question

 

first of all, id stay away from exciters and stereo spreading on your master if you don't know what you're doing.

I completely agree. Those plug-ins do not belong on your master channel strip.