Mastering question (sort of)

[Abery Clark]

I'm putting together a CD of U2 songs for car use. I'm using waveburner for editing and burning. The albums I'm pulling songs from have 2 major extremes.Some tracks have heavy compression and sound loud (songs off POP). Some are very quiet (Achtung baby). The highly compressed songs float around -0.5 and 0 db on multimeter. The quiet ones have a few peaks right at 0db but mostly average -2.0 to -1.5db. If I add a bit of regular gain on the lower volume songs...I get clipping at the peak parts (the areas that use to peak at 0db). Please tell me how I can make everything sound reasonably level. If I need to use a compressor and or limitor...what kind of settings. I want to make an even sounding CD.

[Adam Dempsey]

Reduce the level of the louder tracks.

[MASSIVE Master]

Now that's just crazy talk...

[Abery Clark]

Thanks. I took all the tracks from the POP cd that are in my compilation and had to adjust the gain to -2.8db. That gave the entire CD i'm making to an average of around -1.5 db with peaks hitting zero. When I mix bounce the tracks I will back off overall volume just a tad. In the original question, I was wondering what the quick and easy way (with a plug) I could get everything UP automatically

[macc]

Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master

Now that's just crazy talk...

[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by Abery Clark

Thanks. I took all the tracks from the POP cd that are in my compilation and had to adjust the gain to -2.8db. That gave the entire CD i'm making to an average of around -1.5 db with peaks hitting zero. When I mix bounce the tracks I will back off overall volume just a tad. In the original question, I was wondering what the quick and easy way (with a plug) I could get everything UP automatically

The quick, easy (more or less) and best way is simply reducing the level of the loud track.
You can use a limiter to get the level of the lower tracks up, but that will compromise sound quality and won't make the process quicker or easier in any way.
I understand the question, it's just that there is no benefit, only headache to be had by turning track A up instead of turning track B down. You have no musician, producer or A&R breathing down your neck, asking for total level. Enjoy it

There are automated processes to judge average loudness and adjust accordingly (meta-normalizer in wavelab comes to mind) but they usually work by turning the louder down (which is good, otherwise they would introduce un-auditioned damage) and none of them work nearly as well as your hearing does. So if you have the time, use your ears.