Normalize All Peaks / Max Peaks not working as expected - Doing something wrong?

Is it possibly a stereo clip on a mono track, or vice versa? The thee dB drop sounds like the fabled "Pan Law" issue of summed stereo to mono.

I'm currently trying to normalize all my VO clips' peaks to then pass the track through a compressor, and it boggles my mind how setting "Max Peak/All Peaks" to 0 dB sets it to -3dBTP according to the Loudness Meter.

It doesn't makes any sense, but hey, we are talking about adobe here. The most we can hope is for its decadent monopoly to fall within our lifespan.

I'm not exactly sure how the Audio Mixer works in PPro, but in Audition, a mix is set to 3dB lower than the clip level, which is a measure taken to prevent clipping. It could be that a similar logic is used here.

Normalize will take the peak value of the entire clip and set that at the desired level.

If you want the overall value of the audio to have a volume at, say -6dB, it may be better to use a Compressor/Limiter. This will boost lower levels and cap higher levels.

You can apply that either on a clip level via the Effect Panel and then dragged onto a clip or on a track level via the Audio Track Mixer (twirl the little icon to add effects).

I prefer to use the Multiband Compressor and then use the Broadcast preset.

Hope this helps.