Since I had a few issues recently with the volume levels of my finished mix once bounced from Sonar compared to what I was hearing while mixing I decided to look into the best way to get a final master bus level...both for mix down and for final master.
 
I usually mix with my master at around -6 or lower to save my ears, and depending on material I have been using K-14 for most of my final mix exports on acoustic material and higher on pop/rock mixes...might even throw in a limiter.
 
K-14 usually ends up being somewhere around -6 db average anyways with peaks getting a little above the 0db mark on my master or 11/12 RMS. K-20 is a little less forgiving unless you mix orchestral and not cinematic orchestral as that's  a different set of rules.
 
But my main concern is the levels to calibrate monitors  so that when you hear how loud it is you get an accurate and consistent way to know. One thing I found out that can really throw you off if you use ARC is that ARC is defaulted at -6...so if you're listening to a louder mix...say running it though the paces you need to remember to put the volume on it to the same if you toggle it on. If you don't it will sound like the nuts dropped right out of your mix and it's simply that volume control.
 
It seems the preferred method is to get a pink noise generator in your master and have it generate pink noise at -20 db and your master to unity gain. Apparently Sonar doesn't include a tone generator, but they can be had for free online as a plug-in.
 
Set up a DB monitor which can be an app in your phone. Set it to C weighted and slow response( make sure the app you get has this ability) and put it in your listening position between your monitors....then pan to each monitor and run the following test. Slowly turn up the volume on the back of your monitor until the Db meter reads at a 75/85 db level. Rule of thumb seems to be 75/80db for a smaller room and 85db for a larger space. Do this for both left and right.
 
A couple of things strike me as maybe not quite right.....would there be a cumulative increase in both monitors together? If so, then shouldn't this be taken into account? To me it seems there would be the cumulative effect of both monitors.
 
Another thing- In the last issue of SOS there was an article and the author( sorry I don't remember) mentioned that you might want to tweak your pink noise for your space if necessary...ok then why have pink noise at all if it isn't an accurate measure? Now the author was talking about something slightly different because he covered getting a balanced mix and I'm talking mainly about Monitor levels. His idea was to pull up the faders so they are just below a measured pink noise level. IOW mix below the pink noise with a few exceptions.
 
My goal is to have my setup such that when I move the volume on my master fader, it corresponds to the same way everyone else is going to hear it in the final export.
 
 
 

Let me condense this...
 
"My goal is to have my setup such that when I move the volume on my master fader, it corresponds to the same way everyone else is going to hear it in the final export."
 
How do you achieve this? Is the way I did it the recognized best way? 
 

you never move the master fader.
 
you move all the other faders going into the master fader, to affect gain changes.
 
the soundcard output, i set to give me a volume of 85 db at the point where i sit between my nearfield monitors.
---that is for final mixing.
i always control the VOLUME i am monitoring at, thru my soundcard control.
my monitors are fixed for a certain volume ceiling, and my headphone amp is set the same.
my 85 db volume setting, corresponds with about -5db on my soundcard output.
in other words, i have HEADROOM on my monitors to go louder than 85db at my seat, but only rarely go there.
 
mastering requires a different scenario and setup, it is similar to this, but different, and i wont go into that here.
 
 
i will mix much lower, and louder, at one point or another.
i will also mix for fine tuning in the headphones, AFTER my basic eq and levels are discovered.
that's how i do it.
 

 
Thanks Bat!
 
In my setup the interface mixer (soundcard control) is post master fader in Sonar...so I need to be very careful to return it to it's original setting after setting my db loudness. Since I calibrated it at unity gain all I need to do is return it to the 0db setting.
 
I think this is where some people can get into trouble. In not also taming that interface or soundcard mixer where it needs to be. In a way it's gain staging happening at the final master because you pass audio through two master faders. I have mine set with the pink noise method at around 80db. If I bounce down at that setting my completed file should be just as loud on all other systems....but this raises another question. It usually isn't just as loud. After a mixdown to master the finished mix is loud enough but it doesn't come through other systems at 0db peaks. It usually looses some of the mojo it once had. I'm not a scientist. I don't even play one on TV....so I can only guess that in the dithering process something might be lowering that level. 
 
I haven't taken a file and looked at it on good metering to see the difference. I'm mainly using my ears. I'm sure there is some difference in using a player to test the file ...like Windows Media Player compared to listening in Sonar.

YOU KNOW,
I hate windows media player...
it does something terrible to the sound, and i can't figure out what it is.
bypass everything, still sounds bad..
 
when i want to listen to stuff on a computer, with a computer speaker setup, that kind of thing, i use WINAMP.
 
works very well.
 
my sound card (pci card, Maudio Audiophile 192) has a control panel that lets me save setups,
so i have a setup for analog tracking, midi tracking, basic mixdown, heavy sample mixdown, soft, loud, and another setup for mastering.
 

My sound card (PreSonus FireStudio 2626) has a remote control box which includes speaker switching, muting, talkback and a BIG  volume knob for the control room monitors.
 
While mixing I play with the volume a lot as our ears have varying frequency response to volume.  What might sound big and full of balls at high volume often sounds weak and feeble when turned down.  This is due to the multi band compression applied by our ears and the trick to getting a good sound at lower volumes is to emulate the results of that effect with your eq.  You can only do this by varying the volume you're mixing at rather than sticking to some arbitrary level that could annoy the neighbours
 
To match the final recorded volume with "commercial" releases I put a track of similar genre into the project, routed directly to the sound card outputs (bypassing the Master bus) then group its mute button and the Master bus mute button in anti phase, so a single press toggles between my mix or the reference track.  It's then really easy to play with the final "loudness" of your mix with either the Master fader (that IS what it's for...) or compression+makeup or concrete limiter or whatever your favourite method of adjusting the output level.
Adjust, switch back and forth to compare. Adjust again, compare again.  The actual volume from your monitors is irrelevant, you're doing a direct comparison.
 
Final tip,  don't try to win the loudness war..  you won't get close

Since you quoted something from SoS, maybe you already read this last May:
 
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may14/articles/reference-monitoring.htm
 
Very good write-up.  This is the first time I saw the advice about moderating the reference level for a small listening space, but it makes perfect sense.  Furthermore, had I not done so, my calibration would have produced an unpleasantly loud result.  Using the 75 to 78 level recommended (my room size is borderline between small and moderate), the level seems comfortable and exactly right.

Thanks Bat...I'll look at getting that player. I sometimes use a quicktime player too. Not sure if it's any better or worse:) I like to hear how others are doing this. There was a thread awhile back about a player that you could add plug ins to...is this the one? Also a great idea to save setups on your sound card mixer. I plan to look at that in mine. :)
 
Karyn. Thanks! I  like to play with my volume to get different aural pictures of how a mix will sound at different volumes. Our hearing seems the most sensitive in the  mids somewhere around 1 to 6K. At least if you go by charts like this.
http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm
I probably should have been more clear...I'm mainly thinking about mixdown and getting that volume to a decent level. I need to get some reference material to do as you suggest. Something I just haven't done yet....I'm not interested in the loudness war :) I'm interested in making it loud enough  having a known reference point to determine that.
 
Instead of simply determining that something seems to sound loud, I wanted a sure fire way to know if it is measuring up. I like using reference material up against a measured db reference in the studio. 
 
dmbaer, Thanks for that link...although I'm a long time SOS subscriber I must have missed this one! It's pretty much in line with what I've done so far in generating pink noise at -20db using an add on generator plug-in and monitoring the levels with a decible meter I bought at the app store. Some other DAWs have a pink noise generator built in...Cakewalk...this would be a valuable addition to X4:) You could add it to the bifilter.
 
As it stands I think I'm still running my system a bit too hot at around 83db for a small room...I should probably be closer to 70/75db. It has plenty of headroom and most of the time I'm mixing at -6 on my master until mix down when I go to unity gain.....but if I need to see what the mix is capable of I can push it ( if I hold my ears).

One thing I don't recall reading in link dmbaer posted. Most recommend using a sound level meter with C-weighted measuring capability. Here is a description of it.
https://www.noisemeters.com/help/faq/frequency-weighting.asp
 
In a nutshell C weighted is supposed to account for the response of the human ear at higher volume levels making it excellent for a measurement such as this.
 
Although K-20 seems to be mentioned more than K-14 in the Bob Katz system of measurement. I like K-14...K-20 seems to push above the boundaries typical of most of my mixes, the exception being orchestral music.

NO doubt you are aware of the unique issues of small listening spaces researched by Ethan Winer.
 
His company's website has lots of good info about damping low frequencies. Of course they have products.  http://realtraps.com/
 
This page has lots of links to articles: http://realtraps.com/articles.htm
 
http://realtraps.com/art_measuring.htm  this article has lots of info and images about how they measure.
 
He has a test "cd" available that plays each frequency from 10 to 300 Hz to help measure frequency balance and decay for low frequencies.
 
To better see the differences by frequency I created a project, combined all the tracks from the original files, and added 2 second spaces between each tone.
My test project is here: http://lansing.com/audiotemp/
http://realtraps.com/test-cd.htm  original tones and description and links to software.
My project has one track of original and 1 track with spaces.
 
I then play the project, at various levels and record at different ear-level mixing locations.
The resulting tracks are very interesting.
 
He uses software that displays cascade graphs.  All very cool.
 
I figger, if the room is way unbalanced the measurements of sound level will also be.
 
I have constructed a few traps similar in size to the realtraps. But I do not have sealed membranes. I used heavy rock wool. I have more materials and will continue adding damping, prolly until I die.
 
My test project is here:
http://lansing.com/audiotemp/     22 meg