I'm a novice too...

The bass is compressed on it's own track...probably smacked down quite a bit...and I think I have the Softube distortion plugin on it too from memory. I'm not able to check it out right now. Since there were so few instruments in the song I decided to make the bass fill a lot of the content...so I might have gone overboard with its volume.

I'll check it all out...as I said I certainly had this issue of a single instrument triggering compression on 'Swamp Blues'...it's a messy mix and not well recorded...the snare (ezdrummer) was jumping way out on some hits and it definitely triggered some bad sounding compression on the entire track. I managed to fix it to some extent...it's a song from a certain stage of my recording and mixing understanding (mind you, only a couple of months ago)...but I seemed to have made some advances in recording and mixing since then in the last 3 or so songs. They are much better recorded...with a clearer view of how each part should fit, and I think most importantly, with a way more solid drum mix and sound.

Dealing with ezdrummer and midi makes me curl into the fetal position...so sorting out drums was something I used to do as quick as I could...I never had a feel for it...how they should sound...I used to just arrange something that held a beat and that was it. Recently, I found ways to improve the way my drums sound...it's made for much better recordings.

You could be totally right about the bass triggering master bus compression. I'll look into it...and hopefully won't do anything to make matters worse!

Thanks