Like many people in this forum, we all subscribe to Record Pools which gives us access to the latest tracks, DJ Friendly Edits and Remixes, aswell as Acapellas and Instrumentals.

Whenever I download new tracks, I run them through a MP3Gain/Smart Gain app for Mac which levels out all my songs in my library to a consistent level, so I don't have to play around with the gains on my mixer too much when mixing live.

My question is, when it comes to Studio and DIY acapellas, I know I'll have to increase the gains to match the original track that I just normalized otherwise the acapellas will be too low in comparison to the original tracks.

Before I make Acapella Intro, chorus out, and outro edits. How loud should these acapellas be normalized to? I understand all songs are mastered differently etc.

I've did some tests on a few songs: Normalizing all original tracks to 0db, and the Acapellas to -3db and when I play them on Scratch Live the waveforms on the original tracks where they drop the beat out so I can compare both acapella waveforms - they look identical and even.

I'm a noob when it comes to production side of things. Is there a standard in how loud Vocals are supposed to be? As well as instrumentals? Like I said normalizing my acapellas to -3db works 75% of the times visually and how loud it is. I want to start making edits but don't want to waste all this time - if not done correctly.

Thank you in advance