Hi SILVERBACK.

Normalizing just brings the track up to the noise ceiling. If you're careful about your tracking, or you're using all RealTracks, you probably won't need it. On the other hand, if you've recorded something a bit quiet and don't want to bother with a plugin, it can be useful.

Another useful feature associated with normalizing is the gain change/post peak limit. This puts a brick-wall limiter at the noise ceiling and then allows you to push up the noise floor by the selected amount. Think of it like tape compression, but without the subtle distortion that tape added.

If you want to go for tape saturation, try patching in the PG Distortion plugin. Two simple controls, pre-gain and output, let you boost and color the signal. It's surprisingly good, either on single tracks, or patched into the main output bus.

Hope this helps.

ROG.

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