Do this by ear rather than with meters because meters in cubase measure peaks and our ears tend to relate more to rms levels.
From my experience of mixing my own variable vocal performances compressing will only work to a certain extent if you have wide ranging levels. I prefer to have relatively even volumes going in to a compressor. My solution is to first use the volume handles to match the clips.
If I still have too much variation I insert an instance of FreeG from Sonalksis in the first insert slot and automate the levels before any other treatment. Then I compress and eq etc as required and I usually automate the track or group fader to highlight bits or for broad level changes for different sections of the song.
Another thing you might try is doing several passes of your vocals using the āstackedā recording mode. Since you just recently went to SX, you may not even know about this feature. You can do multiple takes in a single pass, cut them up into parts phrase by phrase, and then compile them into one take using the best sections of all the takes. This is how I usually record vocals. Then, if thereās still one or two phrases that are questionable or out-of-tune, you can set markers to part (I think itās CTRL-P) and then punch in on the bad phrase
No, but it does have Dynamic Events. Remember I used to spend hours campaigning for them to be fixed, and then When Cubase SX1.0 appeared without them, I then spent hours campaigning for them to be put back.
So use the Dynamic Events to draw your volume curve in.
I didnāt real all the posts, but here is my 5c worth (no 2c in Australia).
Normalisation is only really for raising up the overall level of finished tracks, so that when listening to several tracks on your MP3 player, you donāt have to keep adjusting the volume. It is not suitable for processing your collection of clips of various levels.
You adjust levels so that each of them is at least roughly in the optimum part of the volume scale ready for mixing. This is the place to allow FX to work in their best range as well. Then use automation to tailor levels in the mix.
You can do the handle adjustment stuff, or offline gain adjust so the clips are permanently as if you recorded them correctly in the first place.
At the very end, you may want to [judiciaously] apply some maximising to bring all parts of the mix closer to the maximum.
If you are using the floating point format for the project, normalising is meaningless.
compressing will only work to a certain extent if you have wide ranging levels. I prefer to have relatively even volumes going in to a compressor. My solution is to first use the volume handles to match the clips.
although youā[d have to use a group for common stuff like EQ,FX Sends, panning and main volume, etc