You've got your terms all wrong.... normalise is a digital gain process.
You're thinking of Normalled, half-normalled, and de-normalled. These describe the behaviour of the connection between top-to-bottom patch points.
In a normalled config, signal flows from top to bottom without a physcial patchcord - and plugging-in to either input breaks the connection.
In a half-normalled config, signal flow is the same as for normalled, but you can use a patchcord from the top without breaking the connection (useful for branching or taking a copy of the signal to send elsewhere without affecting the rest of the connections).
In de-normalled config, no signal flows from top-to-bottom unless you physically use a patchcord to connect them.
The usefullness of configuring a PB as normalled is to avoid having to use patchcords for the "normal" operation of your signal flow. SO for example, if you wired all the inserts of your mixer into the PB, and configured it as de-normalled, you'd have to use patchcord for each channel, otherwise you'd get no signal. But if you used half-normalled instead, signal flow is retained and you can patch-in only when needed.
