Noel, good explanation.

Babymusic, you will quickly run into those who will advise you never to use normalization. I disagree; use whatever tool works best in each situation. But if I normalize, I set the target at -3 and the reason is what Noel said, to leave headroom for processing and effects during mixing, and then mastering. However, it’s been a long time since I used normalization since I discovered ‘smart’ limiters. They do some compression to accomplish raising the gain but unequally by compressing the total dynamic range. The first tools to do this somewhat that I’m aware of were T-Racks then Ozone. Now I use a separate smart limiter by Sonible called Smart Limit. I think it’s ‘smart’ because it makes different choices depending on the genre you choose and the desired amount of limiting (hard or soft).

If some of the terms I’ve used are unfamiliar, they will give you a start in your reading.

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.