HELP!! mixing down bounce to disc QUESTION

[future man]

I read similar problems all over this thing, but my question, inpiticular, never really gets answered. So here is my own, personal question, straight foward.

I use protools on my PC with an Mbox for the moment. After recording an entire project, and I bounce it to disc, meaning, mixing it down to a wav file, and the final product sounds more quiet than other mp3's and my other tunes on my hard drive. And it is the same situation when I burn it to a CDr. Anyone know what I have to do to 'bulk' it up? Make it louder with out having it clip all over the place?

When I mix down, I usually bounce it to 16 bits, cause when I bounce it to 24 (as this is what I record it at) It just simply won't play, and I get some error in windows media player.

What do I need to do? Can anyone help me out here??

[sae]

In order to get a louder mix you need to make sure that your instruments are tracked at loud as possible without distorting. Using compressors on your tracks to minimize the peaks (that's the red linning) will allow you to raise the entire volume without distortion or clipping.

Sometimes it is possible to take your finalized wav file (before you burn it) and compress that and raise the volume of the finalized mix. This is not the "best" way to do it, but sometimes you can get away with it.

P.S. It has nothing to do with burning the cd (unless you have some kind of normalizer on your burning software that's decreasing your volume) but more with proper mixing and tracking

[future man]

Hmm... I can't add any compression with out it clipping like hell, its maxed out in PROtools, volume wise. THe only plug in I am using is t tracks equalizer to add some high end and brightness.

Don't hate me for this, but... Any other suggestions?!? I need help!

[future man]

Actually, I just tried that other thing you had mentioned. After bouncing to disc, i opened up the finished product, and cranked the volume, then bounced to disc again, and... Success, with no clipping!!! THanks a million, you saved my life.