When Normalizing. I did - Select All> Effect>Normalize. Two of the tracks have a child playing a drum kit. Including a solo where he got very loud. I knew it was coming so I turned down at the beginning of the track. Still. It was the loudest part of the show.
So when Normalizing. That part is what set the high bar. Forcing everything else to have lower levels.
Should each track be normalized independently. So rouge loud parts don’t effect the whole recording. Or does that make it uneven everywhere.
This is why I was suggesting light dynamic compression above.
Let's say the entire recording is below -6 dB, except for a handful of snare hits that peak around -1dB. If you apply, say, 3:1 or 4:1 compression to everything above -6 dB, then the snare hits get quieted while everything else is left unchanged, and you have the headroom to normalize afterwards and make the whole thing significantly louder.
(If you start compressing large sections of music, you get into Loudness Wars territory and it will sound like crap. But for a few stray drum hits or claps or even loud vocal moments, it should work fine.)