I like to find out the tendencies of the mics I'm working with if I'm doing live recording and then do some slight EQ adjusts of various types. I've found that the blood overdrive plugin in flstudio can be used subtly to boosts dead mids. baxxpander is a nice free vst that'll really boost your bass naturally and will also give a nice analog thump to things. TeslaSE rocks as an all around saturator on the master. I usually like to stay away from compression since I find it very difficult to find a good sounding compressor, at least on the software side. every once in a while I use a slight amount of compression in soundforge on some tracks, but it doesn't always make it sound better. another thing in soundforge that I like to use is the smooth/enhance filter, but again, I don't use it on everything, just if it makes it sound better. I've always wanted to use a lot of different things, but ultimately the less is more approach is better, and it is often better to be subtractive when using EQs, but I don't always take that advice.