I was so hung up on plugins that I totally forgot about the normalize function in the Audio processing menu. sorry 'bout that.
Musicmind,
I have a similar scenario. I’m putting together a show that uses backing tracks for keyboards and orchestral. Of course, the levels of the tracks can vary but even a standard normalize is of little help because what I really care about is matching the perceived volume (there’s a technical term for that kind of normalization but I don’t remember it) since peak normalization doesn’t guarantee that.
My solution was to use Wavelab which, in addition to being able to normalize the perceived levels, has watch folders that run batch jobs. It’s perfect for this. For example, if I want to do a slight eq tweak or anything else in addition to normalization, I just include it in the batch process that I create and assign that particular batch job to a folder that’s being watched.
When I drop a file in a watch folder (e.g. use it as the target folder for my mixdown), the batch processor immediately wakes up and processes the file, creating a normalized copy.
Without a doubt, having normalization built into the final mix as in PT / Logic is a great feature, and my solution required me to spend more money. However, once I took the plunge I was very happy with the solution. Watch folders coupled with the overall power of Wavelab make for a very easy and comprehensive solution.
Of course, you may not be interested in buying Wavelab but perhaps this will spark your imagination if you have other processing tools that use some kind of watch folder technology. Hope it helps.
And ableton…