I'm a little perplexed.

Maybe you folks can give a little input here.

I composed a 12 track song on Sonar, master bus is -6 db, just under the hotspot with an LP 64 Multiband thickining up the mix. The volume is just fine coming out my monitors.

The problem: when I render ther audio to WAV and/or MP3, the volume is about half of what I am listening to when I'm running the song on the program. I have compared it to other MP3's and it is weak in the volume dept..

What gives???

Try setting your master bus at 0. Have your limiter set at -0.1.

you're missing the "mastering" stage of the song.

After you bounce down the song to a stereo wav file, you need to then do some limiting to bring the volume up to 0.

So yes, some limiting on the master mix bus will bring the volume up while tightening things up.

So IOW, drag the rendered WAV file onto a track, then bring the master bus to 0 with the limiter?

Oh a little confusion. My slider on the master buss is set to 0 but the peak is at -6 db barely hitting the red.

I'll tell ya what I find handy...

In two track editor programs like Sound Forge, you can run analysis on a track to get its RMS level. The harder a track is slammed the closer it gets to 0, and the more squashed it sounds. If you ran analysis on your track, funkwave, you might find it has an ave. RMS if -20. But lot's of commercial releases go -10 or -8. That sucks. But you can get -12 and still have it sound good. You got to be aware of what you average RMS is for your track.

I'll use an L2 or the Massey limiter and hit it for a test. Then analyze and see I'm only getting maybe -16. So I'll undo and hit it harder and get the levels up and listen for when the nasties start creeping in. It's a teeter totter of compromise. Loudness v. Quality.

So, mix, then master your level. 2 stage process.

Phil, great idea but I am basing the differences in output on a library of mp3's that all have a louder output, while listening through the monitors. IOW when I run the Sonar mix, it cranks. Once I render the mix to WAV it's half as loud as the live Sonar output.

What would you consider as a good meter plugin, preferably in .AU format?

"about half" to me suggests that you may have two buses leading to your speakers at the same time - this is a problem I've heard of before using Cubase (no experience with Sonar). Make sure you don't have some sort of "monitoring" bus set up to your speakers that sends the same mix as the master.

Render the stereo mix to disk, then reimport it back into a new session of Sonor and listen on the same monitors you mixed with. If the level of the mix really changed, something is going wrong during the render.

Chances are, nothing went wrong. It's just quiet compared to mastered mixes. While you're in that session, you can try some limiting on the two track.

BTW, I think it's good that your unmastered mix leaves some headroom with the master fader left at zero. It's a good indication that you tracked at appropriate levels and gives you more room to work with at the mastering stage. 90% of newbies have the opposite problem, mostly because they tracked so hot the DA output starts clipping after they've summed a bunch of tracks.

I am absolutely loving the WAVES DORROUGH Loudness meters, however, the OP might want to check his monitoring systems gain, and input level to the amplifiers. Though, from his description it sounds as there is some other DAW based attenuation going on with the bounce. Not sure, but I am often confronted with the "monitors are too loud" problem where things are way too loud in the mix position, and thus everything is pulled back in lieu of. But, I agree with Phil, your metering is key and good, fast and accurate metering is crucial to getting better RMS density and loudness without distortion.

FYI Sonar has various meter options, one of which is showing peak and average simultaneously. You can also set the meter range. I set mine on the master bus for 24dB as you can really see the effects (or lack thereof) with compression and limiting, but the ones on tracks for 90dB so I can see noise and crap visually.