my tracks ain't loud enough!

alright, newbie question. I'm just now sinking my teeth into the beast that is mixing and I'm getting more and more comfortable on the eqs, but the biggest problem I'm having now is that my joints simply aren't LOUD enough. I don't wanna hit the red and cause distortion, so I've been playing it safe, but when I play my joint up against properly released stuff (and even stuff that isn't), the difference in volume is huge. short of dropping dough on mastering, what can I do now to enhance the volume of my tracks while keeping everything sounding nice? (btw, I'm using lowly Garage Band now- gonna upgrade to Logic pretty soon.)

theStudent wrote:alright, newbie question. I'm just now sinking my teeth into the beast that is mixing and I'm getting more and more comfortable on the eqs, but the biggest problem I'm having now is that my joints simply aren't LOUD enough. I don't wanna hit the red and cause distortion, so I've been playing it safe, but when I play my joint up against properly released stuff (and even stuff that isn't), the difference in volume is huge. short of dropping dough on mastering, what can I do now to enhance the volume of my tracks while keeping everything sounding nice? (btw, I'm using lowly Garage Band now- gonna upgrade to Logic pretty soon.)

Current topic can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=140246

thanks.