I've been using acid pro for several years and have found that while it's one of the finest programs for musical expression, the mastering side, falls a little short.

1st off I guess I need to say is that I hardly ever use the pluggins that come with the software. I have found that the Sony pluggings tend to be somewhat cpu intensive and are not up to the quality of the Acid software so I use one of the Waves bundles almost exclusivly.

Now on to mastering and pre-mastering..oops got the cronological order wrong lol.

Generaly, these days, if I'm working on quality production, I'll work my track panning, DB and hrz levels so most everything is balanced, won't cause ear fatigue due to hrz levels being to high or low and once these things are done, I'll pre-master the whole project at -10 to -12 dbs, render as a .wav then master in T-Racks using, as a start, one of the pre-sets which comes closest to the feel I want to achive, adjusting and fine tuning from that point.

The master .wav with be rendered at -2 to -1 DBs.

I've found that for depth, clearity and width that this works best for me...at least until I find a better way.

A lot of people i know use the Waves ultra maximizer to master with, but my experiance has been that it doesn't give finite control like T-Racks and tends to bring out a "metalic" digital sound/feel without much warmth.

I hope this may have been helpful and if anybody has other methods, feel free to add to this thread 8-)