Sonar X2 Prducer and Ozone5

I am not new in music but new using in this software. Till now: nothing works here :) It's really frustrating and difficult. It's not the best thing to use "normalize" to get the best output for a number of songs I do read here and there. But HOW do I get a good result without it?? One song is too loud and the other one is too silent. Sorry but I can't help it. A whole week of work and no results.

or even better if you can go back into the mixes and try and get your levels for each mix close, rather than possible making things worse with a limiter.

First of all, are you mixing or mastering? Both processes can be tormenting! There is no cut and dried approach to either process. What works for one song will not work for all. BE PATIENT! If you are not doing this for a living and you have no deadline to meet, take it in steps. I would suggest to take one song and one song only. Concentrate on learning how to use the tools you have before you. Without a clear understanding of what each plugin does it will be very hard to get a handle on how these DAWs work. Most of all, don't feel alone! A lot of us who have done this a long time still have a hard time with mixing and mastering. This forum is a very good place to start your quest for the best mix you can get. There are a lot of knowledgeable people in here who are chock full of ideas to help. I know the first thing we would want is for you to post some of your songs so we can offer our ideas about what may or may not be happening. If I were using Ozone 5 in the Master buss, I would delete it until I got closer to a mix I was happy with. Learn X2 first, then worry about learning Ozone! Ozone is very powerful and full of features. Just learning Ozone on its own is quite a feat. Get your mixes without it first, then add it for mastering. That's about all I can offer you at this time. I'm sure you will get more responses.

  Sidroe: I know :) I understand you are saying :) :) As I did say: I have good wav files ready to go. It' s just that one thing: getting them on the cd in the right way:)

I spent a lot of time mixing where I didn't have the benefit of everything being automated. Sounds like you have too. Before I got Cakewalk, I spent a number of years mixing music using all in one solutions like the Akai DPS 12 and Tascam 2488. With both of these recorders I would make live recordings and then mix them again and again for a real-time bounce down where I was sliding faders etc. Sometimes when I listen back to those old recordings I still prefer them.

Cakewalk makes me way more efficient. I mix substantially more music in substantially less time, but sometimes the speed shows.

And sometimes, the more I listen the worse I make a tune. It really depends. Less is often more.

But I love experimenting where I have no idea what I'm doing. I have certain friends who I record and I pretty much know the FX I'll use. I know they don't love it when I apply a reverse reverb (giggle) or a reverse delay (ha ha).

I try to keep experimenting.

At this point, I definitely mix anything I care about using Sonar.
 
Frankly, it's pretty easy to level songs for a CD. Find the quietest song for the CD normalized and then lower the volume of other songs relative to that one so that the listener doesn't need to adjust the volume while they listen to the CD. You can get fancier by remixing the louder songs so they contain more dynamic range rather than just reducing the volume. When I say reducing the volume, I mean lowering the volume fader so that the tune doesn't use every available bit. If you increase the dynamic range, there can be a few loud moments in the song (less compression) but the song itself has a listening volume closer to the softer song while still using every available bit.