Wave Hammer (comes with Sound Forge)

or

Waves L1 UltraMaximizer

Jerrell,

My favorite question. "How do I make it as loud as..(insert favorite band)?" If you have files in a DAW Waves L1 software works. But if you want your songs to really sound like professionally produced CD's there is a lot more to it than just making it louder hence mastering and this forum.

Without getting into the whole thng I will tell you to be carefull when using these level goosing limiters. Compare the before and after at the same level. Everything sounds better when louder at first. Really pay attention to what it's doing to your music.

If you are going to have your songs professionally mastered DO NOT use these things. As a mastering engineer I sometimes get files from people who slam the level with an L1 or Finalizer leaving no dynamic range or room for proper EQ. At the very least make a copy of the before and after for you and the engineer to compare.

Joe Lambert

get free filter from steinberg a vst

take ur fave commercial cd insert the wave pattern of a particular song and free filter matches the eq of the song and u can read the directions about tweaking and etc.. it has like a 30 band eq or something i don't remember its not in front of me now and it makes ur music loud like it too maybe add a maximizer to make it a bit higher

If you plan on doing the mastering by yourself thru Wavelab then read about how mastering is done and what is needed to do it right...There are certain rules you need to follow such as algorythmic porcessor assignments, EQ spectrums, Spectrum analyzers, Limiters and so forth and so forth...
AS others have stated before...dont push the level too loud..give it the dynamic headroom it needs!!Let the music breathe man but dont pump it with compressors and limiters!!!
Opus

Joe makes a good point, if you are going to mastering house, leave the dynamic processing and eq off of the stereo bus, run it flat with no fx. Give the mastering house the highest bit and sample rate that you have recorded and or mixed to and leave the dithering off, if you "have" to reduce the wordlength.
Good advice gent's. But I think that he wants to master his own stuff. You can use the Mastering Section in Wavelab to increase the loudness. In the case of going to cd directly after Wavelab processing, you want to set the dither, to 16 bits, Type 1 noise shaping, set the faders to the amount of dB's that you want the perceived output to relate. The Wavelab Mastering Section is an automatic feature that simplifies things for intermediate engineers, but IMHO, you would be better off getting a viable hard knee limiter, and learn how to use it to set your volume to match the commercial squash. I've found Wavelab to be lacking compared to other mastering programs. I agree with all of the posters on this topic about over compressing. Leave the RMS level low enough to maintain coherent dynamics of the material.