Hi,
Just finished mixing a song in Sonar X3 B Producer with:
Piano
Bass
Drums
Pad
Violin
Cello
Rhodes Piano (short section)
Lead Guitar (short section)
Three female backup singers
Lead vocals
 
I've got the singers' parts all going to their own Bus, and those buses going to the Master.
 
I've got all the drums going to their own bus and that bus going to the Master.
 
I've got all the instruments going to the Master.
 
I've got the lead vocal going to the Firebox (my interface) Stereo Outs.
 
The Master has a compressor and an EQ on it.
 
The lead vocals has its own compressor, reverb and EQ.
 
Everything sounds good and none of the meters in the entire project are too high. When I Export a wave file (using the "What You Hear" preset) and open it in Sound Forge, the tops and bottoms of the waveform are slightly flattened, but I don't hear any problems.
 
Is this OK? I tried sending the lead vocal to the Master, but it changed the sound of the voice (plus that'll make two compressors on the voice and two EQ's and I don't know it that is OK.
 
I'm not sure how to "Master" a project and need to get this project out to someone, so of course I'll study the mastering process later, but I didn't want to leave it the way it is if there is some kind of disadvantage or problem having a final waveform look like this even though I don't hear clipping or distortion.
 
Thanks.

I'm little help at this juncture but wouldn't it be best to post an MP3 for further listening/scrutinizing from the forum members?If you do I'll listen to it and respond.
 
Carry on....

1. Do the waveforms hit the upper and lower limits of the available headroom?
2. Are the tops flat, or rounded?
3. Does the meter on Sonar's master fader exceed 0?
4. Are you aware Sound Forge has a decent clip restoration process, should that be necessary?

+1 with quazelar. If you can't, or are reluctant to, my advice is , if it sounds good , it is good. However, make sure it sounds good. Compare it with a recording that you trust is of great quality. Listen for distortion. Now listen to your mix. Sound clean? then you're golden. My gut instincts tell me that all is probably not right, though. Clipping,(especially digital)= distortion, and we're not talking even order tube clipping here. digital distortion is decidedly not musical.
Have a couple people listen besides yourself. You have to be careful to distance yourself from the project and be objective. Also, burn it using media player. If it sounds good to you using two different apps, your chances of it being good are even better.
Now, does it still sound good? Print it, put it in your car and live with it for a few days. Trust me ,once you've heard it a dozen times , you'll know where every "Aw, I shoulda done this.." is.
But don't let that hang you up either. You should have a pretty good idea if you want to leave it at that point.
Tim

If that compressor on the mastering bus contains a brickwall limiter, it'll prevent distortion/clipping etc.  Just FYI, professional mastering engineers HATE mixes w/ brickwall compression or any significant compression to the overall mix, because it hamstrings them.  That being said, I use ozone on my personal, non-professionally mastered mixes which has brickwall AND overall regular compression applied to the mixes.

If a waveform hits 0 for a certain number of samples, many CD manufacturers will reject it. This is why some people normalize to 0.1dB.

If you create a master that peaks at 0dB in the digital domain it's quite possible it will clip at the DAC. I think for CDs even -0.3 is recommended.
EDIT:
To the OP, why not bring all tracks/buses down a little bit. Does anything change in the sound quality? Do you get audible clipping if you remove/bypass the compressor?

Temporarily bypass all the plugs on the master bus.
 
What are the levels like now when they hit the master?
 
As a rule of thumb, I like to operate with at least 6dB of headroom at this stage, before I apply any master bus processing

Hey, thanks to everyone who replied above with tips and suggestions. I appreciate it and am tinkering now. I also just signed up on Lynda.com for a Mastering Course and am starting it today.