No complaints about old threads being revived, especially when the question is still relevant. Although the question may have been resolved long ago for old hands, there are thousands of noobs joining our ranks every day that need to find answers to these types of questions. Appending an old thread rather than starting a new one lends some continuity and shows a beginner that it's not a dumb question because it's been asked before.
 
It also reminds me of a feature I've long wished DAWs had: RMS normalization. Now, that would be handy. Peak normalization, not so much.

bitflipper
It also reminds me of a feature I've long wished DAWs had: RMS normalization. Now, that would be handy. Peak normalization, not so much.

[I know you're aware of this, bitflipper]
 
Sonar could distinguish itself by incorporation normalization and metering to EBU R128.
Instant euro sales and a challenge to other daws.

I doubt it would have much immediate impact on sales, but regardless I think it's a great idea for a master bus plug-in.

Kind of a strange question really.  Of course we do -  it is a tool like any other, and a very handy one at that  Anyone that questions it's usefulness never had to work in a tape based analogue recording studio:)
 

Paul P

bitflipper
It also reminds me of a feature I've long wished DAWs had: RMS normalization. Now, that would be handy. Peak normalization, not so much.

[I know you're aware of this, bitflipper]
Sonar could distinguish itself by incorporation normalization and metering to EBU R128.
Instant euro sales and a challenge to other daws.

Amen! Normalize to LUFS values. Normalize to RMS values with user-set RMS time window, both avarage RMS and peak RMS value based.
PUHHHHHHHH-LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!
 
 

bitflipper
RMS normalization. Now, that would be handy. Peak normalization, not so much.

This is the only thing I use in Soundforge. It has RMS normalization!

Agree about RMS and LUFS. I'd go as far as to say I can't personally think of a use for peak normalisation in mix. Gains you nothing that you don't gain from the, er, gain knob.

Anderton
I doubt it would have much immediate impact on sales, but regardless I think it's a great idea for a master bus plug-in.

 
[Re EBU R128]
 
Europeans have historically been more interested in standards and regulation and I can imagine support/compliance being attractive to them.  I believe Sonar gets some love in Europe so I can only see advantages in bringing the two together.  I've haven't read much on what's involved, but I don't think a plug-in would be sufficient (and some already exist).  I believe the standard takes into account the song as a whole (or some sort of window on it ?), something on the order of you're having an overall loudness limit that gives you some leeway in how dense a particular passage is compared another.  Like you can have a brick for a chorus as long as you also have some really quiet parts (?), all below a certain max instantaneous limit, I'm sure.
 
Doesn't a plug-in only take into account what's happening at one particular instant (maybe looking ahead, but how far?).  I get the impression that you'd need something more like a Region FX that treats a track/bus as a whole and constantly updates and displays the loudness value for its contents.
 
If for no other reason, support for a standard (including of course the American equivalent) would look good on the spec sheet and sound good in the marketing hype.  That it might also lead to better songs wouldn't hurt either.
 

Paul P

Anderton
I doubt it would have much immediate impact on sales, but regardless I think it's a great idea for a master bus plug-in.

 
 
Doesn't a plug-in only take into account what's happening at one particular instant (maybe looking ahead, but how far?).  I get the impression that you'd need something more like a Region FX that treats a track/bus as a whole and constantly updates and displays the loudness value for its contents.
 
 

Well, you can fudge that by just letting the track play over time and aggregating the loudness data. That's what Izotope Insight does. But yeah, a RegionFX loudness analysis tool would be a wonderful thing.

Doesn't a plug-in only take into account what's happening at one particular instant (maybe looking ahead, but how far?).  I get the impression that you'd need something more like a Region FX that treats a track/bus as a whole and constantly updates and displays the loudness value for its contents.

 
You are correct. Plugins see a small window of data, which could be as small as one sample. Even the ones that need to examine a wider window (e.g. linear-phase equalizers) are only looking at less than a second's worth of data. Even RMS meters are only looking at a 50 ms window.
 
This is why real-time normalization isn't practical. But it could be an offline measurement where you select a region, right-click and choose "Calculate Average RMS" from a context menu. Or "RMS Normalize to this track...", followed by a reference-track selection dialog.
 
I love Insight's LUFS meter. It's part of my default template. One interesting feature that I haven't explored yet is Insight's ability to export automation based on your loudness target. It wouldn't allow LUFS normalization, but it could still be useful to identify problem areas. Now if they'd just expand on that feature and record the loudness graph verbatim, with options to scale and invert it, then you could do some interesting volume automation based on LUFS calculations.