I'm working on a project by my rockabilly band. We've tracked drums and stand up bass simultaneously in separate rooms... but the studio recorded everything with ridiculously low gain...
So, what's the best way to salvage these tracks? Should I normalize them, and if so can I do that within LE 7? Or is compression better?
First of all, one of the joys of digital recording is that "ridiculously low gain" isn't actually that ridiculous anymore. In the days of analog tape, the gain had to be at a certain level or else the recording wouldn't be louder than the tape hiss. Since digital has no tape hiss, you can record at very low levels without problems. However, there is still room ambiance, the noise floor of your equipment, mic preamps, etc.
So the first question is, are your individual tracks ruined by hiss/noise, or is the problem simply one of the volume being low? If the instruments are at the same level of the background noise, that's a problem, but if the instruments themselves came through without noise, even if the levels are at -30dB or so, that's fine.
The best way to handle mixing the song is to simply mix the song at lower levels. If half your tracks are peaking at -30dB and the other half at -3dB, pull down the faders of the tracks at -3dB and mix the song at a softer level. You can always turn up the volume at the level of your studio monitors so you can hear it all loud and clear as your mixing.
As for the final bounce, you have many options to bring it up to the level of other songs. I would
not recommend normalizing in LE7, this is a "fixed point" bounce that operates on the file itself and has very limited headroom. However, if you upgrade to LE8, it comes with an incredibly efficient Normalize option in the bounce dialog. In LE8, the Normalize in the bounce dialog is a "floating point" process, that maps each bit of your audio onto the final 24-bit track at optimal level without ruining your dynamics. That alone may be a reason for you to move to LE8 or Logic Studio.
You can also use effects such as a compressor or limiter on the output to raise the level of the final bounce. Logic Studio comes with a wonderful adaptive limiter (AdLimiter) but that's not part of Logic Express, I believe.
Anyway, low level tracks in a digital recording are not necessarily a deal-breaker, that's the main point.
Hope that helps,
Orren