So you’re riding a fader in real time? Or clip-gaining as the song is playing? Sorry, I’m confused how you do it by ear. Do you hear a problem, stop the transport, then clip gain where you stopped?
Here’s what my track looks like from the last couple of mixes. It has already been re-merged and re-normalized, then turned down a few dB. If you could zoom in on the edit at the beginning, it’s hitting the first plosive when he starts singing.
Im just moving the parts with the mouse, then adjusting on playback.
I didnt do it particularly tidily, as its just an example, without compressing the vocal. I added some drums to the vocal track as I left ALL the drum bleed in, including the tom bleed. I didnt use the KICK OUT as the tom bleed was quite nice on kick and snare.
Thanks for posting that. I’m wondering if this highlights what Boz and Andrew @ColdRoomStudio may have been commenting about? Perhaps it’s the drummer moving around on the mic and maybe a gate or something?
I’m definitely guilty of rolling off the high end in the first mix because I was trying to minimize the cymbal bleed.
I don’t mean to beat this dead horse, but I’m just trying to make sure I am hearing what everyone is talking about…
And finally…
What I did: instead of going crazy with all the manual clip gaining, I thought I’d try MAutoVolume with a pretty aggressive (8dB range) on the vocal. It’s not nearly as drastic as I thought it would be, but you can see it leveled out the vocal pretty nicely.
Here’s a pic of it.
Time to be done. Thanks for all the input guys, I really appreciate it.
Sounds like you are having fun 
How many times all together?
I stopped counting. FWIW - my takeaway. If it’s a LIVE recording, embrace the “bleed”, see if you can get things working together, i.e. a vocal/drum mic, don’t overthink it… Cheers! 
