Thanks again gswitz, I really appreciate your help and this makes a lot of sense!

The levels are a bit low perhaps but at 24 bit you should be fine.
Even if you don't make things worse by normalizing, you certainly won't make it better, only louder. The gain knob sounds like the best solution. As long as you can get good levels for mixing, you're good to go!

Gain would be the first thing I'd look at myself.

Sanderxpander
The levels are a bit low perhaps but at 24 bit you should be fine.
Even if you don't make things worse by normalizing, you certainly won't make it better, only louder. The gain knob sounds like the best solution. As long as you can get good levels for mixing, you're good to go!

 
Yeah the whole normalizing thing didn't sit well with me at all, and now I'm looking at the console on my 2nd screen, I'm thinking..........why the feck didn't I think of the gain knob.............D'oh! I used it all the time in Reason/Record/Reason7 but completely missed it with Sonar. I really appreciate the help from you guys..........I'm getting there :)  
 

RobMc
Gain would be the first thing I'd look at myself.

 As above :) Thanks again guys!

1) 24bit: Good news. There should still be lots of useful data in the files so turning up the level will probably not hurt the quality in a noticeable way.
 
2) 18-20 tracks: Good news. If it was only 4 or 5 tracks it may not have enough energy to sum to a useful level without having to get aggressive with a level boost.
 
3) With everything at unity gain everything does sound fine: Good news. With 18-20 tracks summed at unity it probably peaks pretty close to *insertmagicnumber*dBFS and that means that just about any way you adjust the levels will work out ok.
 
Where I was going with my questions was in preparation to explain that if you "normalize" to some louder level you'll probably end up turning stuff down instead of turning stuff up and that you might find that it is just as easy to simply turn up what you need to turn up. If you did find that you were turning stuff down after "normalizing" to some high level then some might point out that you can lose a little bit of sound quality. With 18-20 tracks in the mix it is probably not something anyone could actually notice with their ears.
 
I think Geoff explained your options very well. :-)
 
My opinion is just mix it. Use the trim and level knobs like they are supposed to be used, and don't forget that you have clip levels available as well.
 
best regards,
mike

mike_mccue
I think Geoff explained your options very well. :-)
 

Thanks, Mike!! I have great teachers!!

mike_mccue
1) 24bit: Good news. There should still be lots of useful data in the files so turning up the level will probably not hurt the quality in a noticeable way.
 
2) 18-20 tracks: Good news. If it was only 4 or 5 tracks it may not have enough energy to sum to a useful level without having to get aggressive with a level boost.
 
3) With everything at unity gain everything does sound fine: Good news. With 18-20 tracks summed at unity it probably peaks pretty close to *insertmagicnumber*dBFS and that means that just about any way you adjust the levels will work out ok.
 
Where I was going with my questions was in preparation to explain that if you "normalize" to some louder level you'll probably end up turning stuff down instead of turning stuff up and that you might find that it is just as easy to simply turn up what you need to turn up. If you did find that you were turning stuff down after "normalizing" to some high level then some might point out that you can lose a little bit of sound quality. With 18-20 tracks in the mix it is probably not something anyone could actually notice with their ears.
 
I think Geoff explained your options very well. :-)
 
My opinion is just mix it. Use the trim and level knobs like they are supposed to be used, and don't forget that you have clip levels available as well.
 
best regards,
mike

 
I like good news :) I started on the project today and things are going along nicely. I'm finding that some tracks don't need much more gain at all and I'm pulling back on others once I apply compression, eq etc. And I'm having a blast with Melodyne Editor :)
 
Thanks again for the input on this folks.
 
Cheers
 
Mark

keep in mind, you do not need to normalize to 100%.   You can always select a level less than the 100% normalize.
 
I would only normalize a track if there were no other ways to get it to set in the mix properly.
 
Instead of looking at the wave...listen to it. Now ask yourself if it sounds OK or is it in fact much too low to work with in the mix.  If it is simply too low (bad recording job or whatever) try normalizing up but not to the 100% level.  More than one time, a weak looking wave track sounded just fine in the mix. Depends a lot on the instrument and the genre. If it works with that low level weak looking wave, don't normalize it just to be normalizing it. You accomplish nothing. If you normalize it up, and then have to pull the faders down to compensate..... what have you accomplished?
 
Remember that normalizing will also raise the noise levels as well as the music.   Giving the wave a small 25% bump up above it's current levels may be more than enough to do the job.
 
My goal in normalizing is as described above and the evidence to me that I did it right is that my faders are in the nominal range from -0 to -10 or so...... if I have to pull them down further, I probably normalized too much.
 
If I have to go above -0, I need to have another look at that track and figure out why I'm needing to run that high.
 
but that's just me and how I do it.

Guitarhacker
keep in mind, you do not need to normalize to 100%.   You can always select a level less than the 100% normalize.
 
I would only normalize a track if there were no other ways to get it to set in the mix properly.
 
Instead of looking at the wave...listen to it. Now ask yourself if it sounds OK or is it in fact much too low to work with in the mix.  If it is simply too low (bad recording job or whatever) try normalizing up but not to the 100% level.  More than one time, a weak looking wave track sounded just fine in the mix. Depends a lot on the instrument and the genre. If it works with that low level weak looking wave, don't normalize it just to be normalizing it. You accomplish nothing. If you normalize it up, and then have to pull the faders down to compensate..... what have you accomplished?
 
Remember that normalizing will also raise the noise levels as well as the music.   Giving the wave a small 25% bump up above it's current levels may be more than enough to do the job.
 
My goal in normalizing is as described above and the evidence to me that I did it right is that my faders are in the nominal range from -0 to -10 or so...... if I have to pull them down further, I probably normalized too much.
 
If I have to go above -0, I need to have another look at that track and figure out why I'm needing to run that high.
 
but that's just me and how I do it.

Yeah, my original thought on normalizing was to go to about -5db but so far I've been able to work with the stems by increasing the gain which makes perfect sense given that the gain knob is there in the first place. Thanks for your input though, yet more great info from this forum.