My mixes seem soft after normalising

The target level for EBU R128 is -23 LUFS, which is quite low in comparison to old style ‘cranked up’ broadcast mixes. There is no problem with that, during broadcast your mix will sound equally loud as other mixes. If you like to take advantage of the new standard, apply less limiting and compression and use a real time meter like LevelView to help you getting the right balance. As a rule of thumb: peek at the large integrated loudness number once in a while to keep it around ‘-23 LUFS’ and make sure that normal dialog drives the rainbow meter around 0 LU. Don’t be afraid if the meter is temporarily high or low on your full mix. When you’re done, correct the master volume of the mix to make the meter match -23 LUFS exactly or use LevelNorm to do that automatically.