To be a bit hyperbolic, I do see a lot of "I just bought this usb mic, how do I do mastering to the vocals to be pleasing?"

Which I'm not putting anyone down for thinking "mastering is how pros sound pro" because it's rampant (ly bad advice) all across the internet. Like a plauge.

But for the love of all that is holy, this bad advice needs to be disposed of once and for all!

Just putting it out there, lest any nagging heresay gets stuck in your thoughts: no mastering is not how recorded music sounds pro. Pro-level musicianship, captured expertly, and expertly and tastefully mixed, is how pro-music sounds pro. Even without "mastering."

The best advice you can receive is that pro sounding music is about 90% performance and arrangement, and about 10% microphone placement and mixing. 0% mastering.

Don't worry about mastering at all. Literally don't. It's going to be hard enough learning to be both performer and engineer without wasting your limited hours trying to learn and grapple with an additional process that, at best, will add less than 1% of final sparkle to your work.

Spend that time just performing better, writing better, and placing your microphones better, and you'll see much better results much faster.

Best of everything to everyone!