Your issue seems to be about knowing what you're monitoring and when to change how you're monitoring.

In mixing there is subjective and objective balancing of signals while monitoring. Subjective you are listening to the direct signal, this is done while recording - when you need to hear yourself (what you are playing now) louder than what's playing back from the DAW. The balance between your Live (incoming) signal and recorded signal is subjective. Done totally for your comfort. When mixing down you want to monitor everything through the (computer) system so you can get the true balance.

Let us know if you are using the MOXF as your audio interface so our instructions will apply to your situation.

In general when attempting to balance signals for Mixdown, you'll need to monitor 'post' (after) all signal has traversed the computer processing it.

Let us know your audio setup.

I am using the MOXF as my audio interface. My current setup is Pod HD500 (guitar and mic recording) and Headphones into the back of the MOXF and the MOXF connected to my PC via USB. So all monitoring and mixing is happening through the MOXF.

How should i set the MOXF levels while mixing? Thanks!

I think i have roughly found the correct level for the DAW Level slider (having success at 80%), but every track comes out super quiet. I am mixing in Cubase to put the Meter level hitting just below 0. Sounds great in my phones.

I can't for the life of me figure out why the mixdown is so quiet.... Please help!

The overall level you get is literally a logarithmic result of the sum of the Parts. Proper mixes sound balanced, worry about the overall output level when mastering.

Many, many folks make huge mistakes in recording and setting levels. A lot of it is subjective. But how much headroom you leave has everything to do with the results you get. When you say the mix is "quiet", you are referring to the overall level of the recording. It's impossible to say without seeing/hearing what's going on. But better too low than too hot, trust me.

Levels are affected by how much velocity you performed with, what sounds you used, how many instruments are playing simultaneously etc., etc. Also, how you assembled your audio in the DAW... There are several ways to optimize your MOXF levels, but be careful with your record levels.

Get a good balance, work out the final levels when you "master" it.

With that said, here is an article for adjusting Record Levels with the MOXF:

USB Recording Tips: Getting Good Record Levels

To try to simplify my two issues and give updates on what i still have not figured out:

1. My confusion with the DAW Level fader when mixing. As i lower the DAW Level fader, obviously the Audio Tracks/non-MOXF audio volume lowers but the MOXF voices being triggered by the MIDI tracks in the DAW do not. This is obviously going to make me mix these MOXF voices differently depending on where that slider is. So I guess i'm confused on where that slider is "supposed to be" while mixing. About 80% seems to work well, but I guess I am just curious what everyone else does here.

2. The more i read about Mastering, the more I realize this (as you said) should probably be cleared up there. My issue is/was that the mix balance was good and the level in the Cubase meters/mixer was just below 0 on my main bus (so everything seems great), but after the mixdown the track was just much more quiet than a commercial track. I think i will open these tracks in a Cubase to try to do some mastering.

Effectively, I mix everything to be just below clipping but the volume of the track after mixdown is still very low compared to commercial tracks.

Thank you so much for your help!

Please read the linked article above, it will show how to boost levels, but it comes with a warning... levels are the most abused things these days - everyone worrying about being the loudest. This is not always the best strategy. Sound-on-Sound magazine recently had an article on audio levels (and what's being done to prevent unnecessarily LOUD mixes).

I'll try to find a link, well worth a read...

http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/dynamic-range-loudness-war

and

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/end-loudness-war

I read the article and i'm not sure that is what is needed here. As I said, the levels in the mixer look great. It isn't that the parts are quiet, it is just that the "good mix level" in the Cubase mixer is not translating to a particularly loud WAV file. Also the article does not mention anything about the DAW Level fader and how to set it during mixing.

After a little more research, it looks like turning Direct Monitor to Off while mixing may fix my first issue. Second issue i'm hoping will be relieved by using a limiter and mastering the track.

Let me know if the Direct Monitor being set to Off is normal setup for mixing.

Thanks!

Edit: After reading your second link I can see where that may apply to my Mastering questions. Also, after reading about Direct Monitoring it seems to be what i was missing. Sounds like i need to monitor my MOXF parts through the USB 3/4 while mixing and not from the MOXF and mixing it with the DAW via the slider.

I added another - it's the one I was originally thinking about!

Thank you for the links. I'm not so much concerned with the loudness except for when listening on a mobile device on soundcloud, it is simply not loud enough at max volume. As i said, hopefully some mastering will relieve this enough.

Thanks again.

There have been books written on this very subject. Our perception of loudness has much to do with dynamic range. Two pieces of music can move meters the same amount but one sounds clearly louder than the other. Like optical illusions there are aural illusions. Because our ear/brain tries to make sense out of what we hear we can actually be listening to multiple pieces of music simultaneously and know what instruments go with which piece of music (we probably shouldn't be able to do this, but we can) we can anticipate and organize sound in an uncanny way.

In general, the dynamic range of a piece of music is very important, don't just judge the loud end (that's easy) recognize that the distance between the loudest and softest significant sounds is what the brain judges.

Mastering (audio mastering) is an art. The art of soft-to-loud.