Could those that care to help please share their digital experience with me regarding "normalizing" my tracks after I've imported them into my DAW? (or in any digital audio file situation?)

I've researched it online: "Due to volume differences between audio tracks, normalization allows you to set the volume consistent between tracks during the encoding or burning process."

OK. I sorta get that. Sounds like it's more for setting up CD's or other collections of finished audio files to be at the same playback levels than for use in tracking and mixing in a DAW. If that's the case I'm wondering why most DAW's offer a normalizing feature. (I know that just because it's there doesn't mean I have to use it!)

Most of my BIAB Real Tracks/Drums don't have a huge track footprint when I import them to my DAW, but they sound great and have plenty of volume/horsepower to get me into -12 vicinity and beyond. Some of the BIAB acoustic guitar Real Tracks are a bit puny signal wise, but there are ways to boost them using the gain/loudness plugins. And since each track in my DAW mixing process is volume adjusted individually, is there really any value in normalizing tracks in my DAW?

Sounds kinda like normalizing might be more useful when one is getting into the mastering phase than in DAW tracking and mixing.

To my ears it seems the normalizing I've done in my experimentation simply increases the level of digital tracks that are already loud/strong enough. (I've lost a lot of my hearing in the high ranges however - playing live R&R several nights a week for 25+ years will do that to you! So if there's something going on up high in the normalizing process, I might not be hearing it).

When and why would you advise the use of normalizing?

If I were to normalize a track in a song, should I normalize all of them - - to have each track "on the same page".

Thanks for your time!

just an old analog dog tryin' to learn new tricks...