Brilliant interview.
Robert Henke talks with Rashad Becker about Mastering
If you talk about real mistakes, I'd say most mistakes are really related to limiting. Second most mistakes are related to compression, and thats about it. Mistakes - there are a lot of things I have to cope with, which derive from being uneducated or inexperienced, like for example people keep sculpting their sound by boosting frequencies if they feel an element is not prominent enough in the mix. Lets boost it! If it has not enough bass or not enough high end - lets boost!!!
Instead I try to educate my customers to think the other way round: Scrutinize every singal for consistency, check for what disturbs it, and try to remove that, and not primarily check the signal for what's too little...
I always think negative. I know this is much less fun actually, but the results will be much more consistent and also louder. People try to achieve loudness by saturating media and thats just the wrong way, its the other way round! Saturation can be done at the very very end. If you saturate your medium from step one on, you will have music which will have a constant high level but will not sound loud.