vladasyn
But this blog sounds immature. Who in the world care about where the Faders are. There is no need to pay attention where the faders are. That number has no value...[snip] he says- the effects may be clipping? Come on now! No visual working? My effects do not randomly clip. There usually is a meter and you can see or hear if it clipping.

 
A few things to remember. First of all, if you never use any plug-ins, you can stop reading now. Keep the channel faders as high as you want, the master fader wherever you want, and godspeed.
 
The world of digital audio is changing constantly. I see people on the web offering advice that is very relevant if you're living in 1991 and using Pro Tools, but has no relevance to 2016. So, beware of misinformation. I have a feeling you are thinking 1999.
 
Next, there is a difference between what makes sense theoretically and what makes sense practically. In theory, you don't need to keep the master fader at zero; in practice, if you're putting any plug-ins in the master bus, it does.
 
Okay.
 
In theory, with SONAR's 64-bit engine and summing bus which have virtually unlimited dynamic range, you can run the channels totally into the red and not get distortion. In practice, you probably use plug-ins and they are not part of the summing bus.
 
People in these forums get all freaked out because some ProChannel module clipping LEDs may go on when the channel fader isn't in the red.
 
The ProChannel clip LEDs relate solely to the ProChannel plug-ins. They have nothing to do with what's happening in the channel hosting them. This is true of plug-ins in general.
 
Think about it. You have a module that emulates analog gear. What happens when you push way more signal into analog gear than it can handle? Do you want to emulate that too, and use up a gazillion CPU cycles to emulate the sound of analog audio crapping out? I would hope not. So, those clipping indicators show when you're about to enter the range of irrelevance. And many plug-ins don't indicate clipping, or have a limited dynamic range just because the designer saw no need for it.
 
Conclusion #1: You want to keep channel levels within rational boundaries if you use plug-ins. Peaking at -6 to -12 is fine.
 
Next, stuff happens. A peak hits on the boundary of the 40 ms meter framing window. A random modulation effect causes a boost. Acidized loops can produce different output levels at different tempos, so the loop that sounded great at 120 BPM when you loaded it may be going "into the red" at 127 BPM. Which you think is fine because SONAR has an ultra-cool audio engine that can take anything you throw at it, but bearing Conclusion #1 in mind, the plug-ins it hosts may NOT be able to take anything you can throw at it.
 
Conclusion #2: Stuff happens.
 
Mastering and mixing are two different things. Mixing is all about getting a balance among various signals. If two signals sound right when one is 6 dB below the other, then it doesn't matter if the signals are at -12 and -6, or -15 and -9. Mixing is about balance, not level.
 
Mastering these days is about level. So you take your properly-balanced mix and beat the living daylights out of it with a multiband limiter so it's nice and loud, causes ear fatigue, and turns people off to music. Or not...it is possible to get a loud master without having it sound horrible, but people pay me a lot of money to do that and it would take a lot of pages to describe the processes, so we'll leave that for another day.
 
Conclusion #3: Use mixing to get the balance right. Use mastering to get the final level of the stereo mix right.
 
Finally, normalization is not the same as limiting. Normalization analyzes the difference between the highest peak and 0. For example if the highest peak goes to -4.3 and you normalize to 0, everything will be amplified by 4.3 db - loud parts, soft parts, whatever. Your dynamic range stays the same. It's like turning up a volume control.
 
Limiting restricts dynamic range by reducing peaks. After reducing the peaks, your maximum peak is now below 0, which opens up headroom, so you can apply makeup gain to make the overall signal louder.
 
Conclusion #4: To get the maximum level so that your music can be heard above the sound of vacuum cleaning, buses going by, living in a flight path, or road noise, limiting does the job, not normalization.