Ask an Audio geek

[Alex K]

It doesn't make sense to normalize before the final step because all those other things are going to change the level.
The order of compression and reverb is an interesting question. I am not an expert at all, but it is fun guessing. I'd love to hear an expert answer.

My guess is that if you add reverb after compressing, you might get a really strange artificial sounding mush because things which originally had different volumes will simultaneously reverb at the same strength. For example, if the compressor dials up the gain going from a loud passage to a silent one, something very loud from before will have the same amplitude of reverb in the final signal as the small sound that comes after, and that seems perverse.

So my pick would be: 1. reverb 2. compress 3. normalize

But if the reverb is not for the overall product but one channel, for example a mic picking up a singing voice, it might make more sense to reverse and do the reverb after compression to have it overall sound more uniform. Again, pure guessing here.