Ok I finally figured it out. I basically had a spike that was causing the rest of the mix to be a lot lower when compressed during the mix down. I fixed that, did a little EQing on the master and lightly compressed it and voila. The reference track helped a lot, thanks a lot R01, you saved me quite the headache!
Cool.
Just a point from previous threads, I am not sure you really need to be pushing maximum loudness all the time. As long as the whole album matches in terms of loudness and sheen and it sounds like one final product. The making things louder has only really happened in the last 20 years. Besides we do not have 200K’s worth of studio equipment or 20 years mastering experience, so trying to replicate Abbey Roads production values is always going to be difficult.
The process I follow is eq and pan when making the track and get everything to sit correctly - this will include compressors and the like on each element. Export at 24/ 96 for mastering. Analyse for clashing frequencies - go and rectify these in the sequencer. EQ, Multiband compressor - do not over do the compressor or it will all sound flat as a pancake, limiter to pump it up a bit, maybe enhance the stereo spread, normalise, bounce back to 44.1, play on as many systems as possible - go back and go through the whole process again until it sounds perfect on all systems.
It’s all a learning process, enjoy it.
One of the most useful compression how to’s was reading the ableton manual on the compressors. It goes without saying, RTFM, but I said it because thats what I had to do, read the f*****ng manual.