so i just did some research. i looked into all of this so long ago, that i no longer recall why i made the decisions that i did. but now i see why i did not use foobar for gain control. foobar only adjusts text like info, to be used by a player that can access that info and then play it with said access. so not even all players will play the song with the same loudness. this is called replay gain. sound normalizer, and now a couple other programs, actually normalize the file, such that is is now actually changed, instead of just adding a gain to it. supposedly you have to be careful with normalizing a lossy file. but since i am using lossless throughout the process, there is no problem. as you already know, sound normalizer can be set at below clipping. so i will keep the current process that i have.
been playing around with the zoom in and out. what seems to work best is - it if fairly easy to get start and stop points a few seconds away from the exact stop and start. so i do that, and delete. leaving me 5-8 seconds left to delete. with that portion taking up a full screen. i then can delete down to a couple of seconds. and then zoom in, until that fills up a screen. you can get very exacting with it. such that your ears are seldom able to hear that small of a mismatch. like a hundredth of a second