Loudness is achieved in many ways. (1),what is your spectrum, the frequencies that you are working with, How much of the signal that you see on the meters is usefull?, it could be loaded with sub-sonic frequencies, or other sounds that do not compliment the music, but rob the space.(2)Beating, or instruments out of tune will rob loudness. (3) Extreme high end, or ringing, could cause excessive limiting in those bands, invisible sounds, triggering compression or limiting.(4) Remember where your hearing sensativity is, and use it to your advantage. (5) carefull use of comp/limiting, to control dynamics, and produce a louder average.
Just some suggestions,
--Rick

I know I dont have too much in the low end department and there isnt any excessive high end. As of now the compression that i've been doing just seems to muddy everything up. All I want is a halfway loud recording. Everything sounds good until I burn to cd. Maybe its the pro tools bounce to disk function.

Have you considered simply the combination of gain-riding and a little peak limiting?

Compression that "just seems to muddy everything up" is probably the wrong approach to dynamics unless you intentionally want muddy sound for some artistic reason.

Figured it out. I was having weird peaks that were so short I had to zoom in super close to see, but were making all my recordings go over zero. I just penciled them down and now just a little C4 only tightening up some low end and not touching anything else..... beutiful.

Originally posted by planet red:
Ok I'm not looking for RHCP volume or anything but my mixes are ridiculously low in volume, even when I compress and limit like crazy. If the new weezer is on 3 then I have to turn up to about 8 for the same volume on my stereo. Someone have any advice for limiting and compression? I have the waves c4 multiband and the maxim limiter from digidesign. I know everyone's going to talk about how evil overcompressed cd's are (and i agree) but my mixes are soooooo low. Anyone know if the bounce to disk function in pro tools LE messes with volume? something just cant be right.

ok, check a few things:
frequencresponse:
under 20Hz is nothing really usefull, so first check the subbass-energy. find a nice way of warm, full bottom, but not boomy. the most people don't listen on systems with who reproduce frequencys under 50Hz proberly.
is there enough in the presence-area?
many mixes who are not loud just don't have enough from 1,5-5 kHz.
dynamic: loud drums, specially bassdrums, make a mix quiet. is your bassdrum much louder than the rest...make a new mix. somethimes yopu can do somethin with a multiband, use a short attacktime for the bass-band & just set the bassdrum a litztle bit back in the mix. as next, you can take the resonancefrequency of the bassdrum a little bit down, its normaly between 50 & 120 Hz.
don^t work only with multiband & limiter. limiters are for my taste only good for 0,5 - 3 dB max!
a mix of multbandcompression for "fix the mix" & "more constant presence", tape saturation for "fatness" & a compact sound, some softly compression, mabye also leveling 1-2 dB, for cd also somethimes a little bit clipping, this is the key for a loud & good sounding sound.