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Increasing a recordings volume with creating distortion

SimonWaldram	Date: December 2, 2005 @ 5:51 PM I have a new piece of music and I'm pretty happy with how it sounds. The only problem is it's a little quiet because of how it was recorded. I use Guitar Tracks Pro and I've been trying to increase the volume by 9-12 dbs, but this creates distortion and so far changing the eq levels has negitively affected the balance. Has anyone got any tips on what I should do? Should I be using the compressor gate or the FX limiter? I've not really used those in the past and don't really know how to get the best results from them.
shadowself	Date: December 2, 2005 @ 6:08 PM Try using a multiband compressor. This way you can add more compression to the bands that need more, and you'll be able to raise your overall volume without peaking. The Waves Ultramaximizer is great for bringing levels up too, but you should be careful if using this plugin as it tends to squash the sound if it's used incorrectly.
woodhead	Date: January 21, 2006 @ 1:08 AM you can also use a limiter too bring the volume up but run into the same problem of losing some quality in the sound. where are you main outs set at? They should be at 0 and mix every thing to this too start. If you crank the master volume up a bit then you should have more head room in your mix, this is actually what you want gives you more control over what you are doing. IMO if you use a lot of compression and limiter in tracking in the mix down, use the compression very sparingly if at all during the mastering stage of your recording. To much compression can make your recording sound "muffled" loud but muffled and this is not good. and the limiter can make the sound loud but lacking in depth.