Yup... some really good, easy to understand advice here.

I use Ozone. And I use it in a way that may seem a bit controversial to some. I do know a few folks who do it the same way I do. So, take a blood pressure pill and read on.....

I import my tracks into Sonar the way they were rendered in BB and RB.... mostly RB. Unless they are especially weak sounding and looking, I work with them as they are as long as they do what I need in the context of the song. I rarely normalize at this step.

I insert Ozone into my Master Buss in Sonar and use one of my custom presets for the song. I start with the end in mind as I work. So essentially, I am "mastering from the beginning". We all know reverb and EQ are cumulative so I'm essentially working with the "you get what you hear" concept. When I finish with my mixing, and setting of levels and tweeking things in the master buss FX, my song is essentially "mastered".... or polished. I don't really like using the term "Mastered" because, as I understand it.... mastering is something done to a group of songs to make them sound cohesive such as would be expected for an album. Like they are all recorded and mixed in the same place at the same time, vs a collection of music that sounds totally uncoordinated with EQ and levels varying from one song to the next. So... it's "small "m" mastering" or polishing to me.

I export the song to my wave editor and trim the tails and THEN.... I apply the normalization to the finished product. The thing people need to know about NORMALIZATION is that it raises everything in the mix by the same amount.... up to the level you have set and it references the highest peak in the music file to do that. It is not like a limiter or a compressor that changes the dynamics in the music.

The problem with normalization is that any noise in the mix also gets raised. Usually not a problem if you have taken care in the recording process and the editing process to remove mic hiss and other junk.

So....moving along.... if there's one peak that really shoots up and it's close to the 0dB reference, you're not going to get much of a boost from normalization until you tame that single spike, or spikes. Then you can apply normalization and see and hear a difference. I like it and use it on practically all my final versions.

All that said.....

The cool thing about mixing music..... there are multiple ways of doing this. One isn't necessarily better than the next or "right" or "wrong". The only thing that matters is how the song sounds and if people like it enough to listen. It's just in how you want to do it to get the results you are looking for.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.