Waves does seem pretty impressive. Thanks for letting me know about it. I am hoping to have professional audio, but I think all I can afford is Ozone.

So why do you go back to 16bit for the final mix? Is that the standard or something (sorry my knowledge in audio is severely lacking)? Under audio in project properties, do you have the bit depth set to 16 or should that be 24?

How can you check the mono signal? By converting the stereo to mono for a test?

24 bit will playback on your computer, but, the standard for wav and cdda files is 16 bit. your CD burner will convert to 16 bit automatically before burning. if you let your burning software to the downconvert, you take a chance that the burning software doesnt dither or has a funky dithering code. if you intend to do any processing on the audio, leave it at 24 bit until you're ready to burn. of course, if the original recording was at 12 or 16 bit, working at 24 bit is of arguable advantage.

yes.....phase errors in the l & r audio tracks will result in cancellation effects. the best way to check for phase errors is to downmix both channels to a mono signal and listen for "pumping" in the volume of the mono channel. there are some phasemeters available as freeware on the internet, and Ozone has one in their package.

Thanks for all your help.