owwww to much to say on this but writing it down would take toooo long... Lets just say there is no right or wrong with music but experience and practise are key... plus there are 1000 different ways of getting the same result's. ""the sampled recording in question will already have been mastered and mixed and "produced" to a given standard, meaning they will have certain EQing on them, panning (if you sample in stereo), compression, filters and effects. I guess my question is how do you deal with that"" - I would never use a sample in its raw form. so look at it, eq, mono or widen... basicly make it fit your tune... or : ) write your tune round the sample. Mastering is a pro set of ears (with experience) running through pro equipment, comming out of pro monitors in a treated (very inportant) room. People who say they can get the same results at home on the laptop are just kidding themselfs. IMO @tom... clipping is something my mate has been telling me is ok recently. Go;s agaist every thing i (and many other's think) but is done more and more now. so if you had punchy drums with big peaks and the rest of the tune looked alot lower, but all sounded right in the mix, then just puch the overall vol by 3 - 6 db. You can get away with a little with it still sounding ok and loud. This is instead of limiting the whole track as this will squash the freq's which you dont want. blah