should i have normalize box checked when boucing a track??

hi,
no, don't normalize.
DR9.

Normalizing calculates the highest peak in your audio and shifts the level of your audio up so that this peak equals 0dbFS (the clipping level). This often used by people to maximize the loudness but it's actually a bad thing to do. Why:
- you are doing unnecessary calculations(= you are distorting your original signal)
- you cannot add extra processing afterwards without running the risk of clipping, and the mastering engineer will have absolutely no headroom to work with
- something as small as dithering could create clipping on a normalized signal
- if you need to normalize in order to bring your loudness up, you are a bad engineer

I´ll second that, speekless. I can´t believe the way some people use normalizing. I have many horrendous examples. Here´s one:

I once received a cd from a "mastering" studio. The track levels differed wildly.

Turned out that they hade normalized the tracks separately thinking that that would do the trick.

Haven´t worked with them since.

/juhani

Normalizing is an absolutely useless "feature" deteriorating your Audio.