Mastering with MC6, Sonar 8.5 or Roland VS2400?

As a side note...I sure like the gui in MC6 better than Sonar 8.5. How much do you think an upgrade to Sonar X1 would be? I guess essentials would be good enough since I have the 8.5 producer plugins.

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That's interesting....thanks. I just did 4 songs were I bounced them all down to a stereo track. Then I used the sonitus eq for a bass cut. A LP64 comp for light compression. A TL tube leveler to get to -6db. Then I bounced that to another track. I put the boost11 on and brought it up to -5 keeping the reduction to a max of -3db. Then normalized to 0. I'll bring this cd to work tomorrow and see if it's any good. I ask because I know there isn't a perfect way to do these things so it's nice to talk process from time to time.

normalizing seems to be the third rail of recording. 

Some like it and some hate it. 

I have pointed out that I normally use it on just about everything as a final level adjuster since it's not a compressor. I will also use it in a track to bump levels a bit... but I also use straight amplification by certain db amounts if I need it. More often than not, I will adjust the input if the level is too low or high. I use amplification to increase or decrease the volume of very small sections in a track...often just a word or even part of a word. 

No one has ever said to me that the normalization has destroyed any quality in the music. Even with my MP3 conversions..... no one ever says they hear clipping due to MP3 headroom being eat up my the normalization. 

I look at the wave form in the WAVE file and compare it to the MP3 wave form and there is NO evidence of clipping. I run the peaks up to 99% of 0db with normalize...well over the -3 db that everyone talks about as the "magic number" not to exceed. 

The problem with Normalization as I see it: 

I have heard all the point for and against normalizing. For me, I hear no problems with the songs and even tracks that have been normalized. 

I think the biggest problem with using normalization is not so much the 3db headroom issue as it is on the other end of the scale..... the noise near the lower volume of the tracks. 

When you normalize a track, the volume of everything in the track is brought up by the same percentage, until the highest peak in the track hits 0db (or whatever you have set as highest).  This means everything in the track gets turned up by that amount...including the noise. 

On midi tracks with synths, this is generally not a problem since the silence is usually silence. However, on an audio track, recorded with either a mic or a guitar preamp of some sort, there WILL be noise. How much will vary. BUT...all that noise gets turned up along with the music in the track. depending on the source material, this could be inconsequential or a major problem. 

That's my 2 cents on normalization. 

It's a tool....

I use it. 

The sound the "pro's" get comes from 2 things. having the best gear and software and knowledge of how to use that gear/software. 

Having said that, we can get some pretty good results by learning what we need to do and how to do it within the limitations of our gear. 

Mastering is generally a process applied to a collection of songs on a CD to make them all sound similar. We do probably use that term a bit to loosely when referring to the final sweetening and polishing we do to individual songs. 

Nobody will black list you for calling it mastering.....we know what you're referring to.