Do a search along these lines. What you need to do is some mastering. This normally includes multiband dynamics and limmiting after the mixdown stage. Alternately add a limmtter as a plug in on your stereo buss. Mastering is an art unto itself, take my suggestions as amost basic starting point.
Steve S.

Cold,
this is the Big Thing on all of my clients minds; Why isn't my CD as loud as a Big Name/Big Money production CD. I tell them, if you want your CD as loud and sonically perfect as a big name band...go to the same multi-million dollar studio and spend the same money as they did...the volume will be the same. the only difference will be the talent.

that being said there are surely things we can do to get levels up.
1) THE SIMPLEST - plug-in Wave Hammer to the master buss and set it for the default "16-bit Mastering" setting. It works very well without tweaking.
it will hold all levels to 0 VU, however, open the plugin as the song is playing and check how much "into the red" it is running, if over 4db into the red
"select all" tracks and pull down faders until it settles in at around +4, but do not pull down the master buss fader. If it is reading "in the black", then it's not compressing, so boost all levels accordingly.

2) If you want that plugin to work even better, flatten out the sound of the instruments with volume envelopes & subtle Eq'ing first, so that the compressor does'nt have to work so hard.

3) Compress vocals & bass with track compression plugins, i have good luck with the Soft Knee and -6db hard limiters, or compress those two instruments on the way to the computer.

I know this is pretty basic stuff and not very high tech, but it's a place to start if I am hearing your question correctly.
Also...Normalizing all tracks is not necessarily a good thing in my experience.
it helps to be able to see the wav files, but i think it can add noise and distortion. I have been trying to up my record levels so I don't have to use normalize and am finding pretty good results.

Pete

Normalize is usefull occaisionally, but like you I rarely use it. Compression on individual tracks is a good way to have parts sit better in the mix and to control takes with uneven dynamics, but it is very easy and tempting to over use.
I have a few chains of mastering plug ins that I pull on and off my mix bus as I mix just to double check where everything is going to sit, where the reverb level is going to end up etc. I make sure this chain is bypassed before I mix down because I prefer to master the whole project ( group of songs) at the same time. This way you can A/B between tracks and adjust for consistency and compatability of frequencies and volume. If you squash all the dynamics at the mix stage you're going to have serious issues later on.
Steve S.

Peter:

Why not pull down the master fader?
Is the fx chain on the master PRE or POST fader?

"Why not pull down the master fader?"

In my (since version 3) experience with Vegas, I have found that I can overdrive the master buss with track volume faders without distortion, but when I leave the track faders down lower and raise the Master buss over 0vu and into the red, i start hearing distortion. I don't know why that is, but as a rule I like to leave the master buss 0vu level alone. Things may have changed in the newer versions and that may no longer be an issue...maybe it never was, but that's what i hear.

I use an older version of Vegas and had pretty much given up trying to get decent volume levels for my various band demos, until I got a copy of Soundforge. If you get a decent rough mix in Vegas and keep the overall volume from clipping, you can import the rough mix wave file into Soundforge and use the multi band dynamics and normalization processes to push up the overall level to something closer to a commercial project. The settings are a little tricky, but with enough experimentation you can get a decent enough result for demos. For example, in the nomalization process you can use an average RMS setting instead of Peaks to push the whole thing up, but you have to be careful or you'll turn your mix into mush. You might be able to get close, but in the end, I think that if you want a really loud, "clean" output like what you hear on todays' commercial projects you might need to take your rough mix to a mastering house.

Um, why SF? You can do this in Vegas !

And if you want a 'clean' commercial sounding mix , do a clean commercial-sounding mix instead of the forementioned 'rough' one, and apply whatever mastering is needed. You can do all this in Vegas. Yolu may find it easier in SF or CDA, but you need the mix as c;lose as you can get in the first place.

Whether or not you have the skill to get a good quality 'master' is dependant on you, not on Vegas (or SF or cDA). And the only way to learn is by DOING. Over and over again a=until you get it right.

geoff

If I am going to take my Vegas demo to a Mastering house, should I set the demo to no clipping on the master faders, or go ahead and overdrive it a bet so that when the mastering occurs professionally they can get an even more robust sound?

I worry about the ramifications of either choice. If I push the fader down to where nothing clips, I'm worried that the rough mix will be too quiet and even a good mastering house will not be able to raise its volume high enough. However, with the other choice, the obvious problem is clipping, and I'm worried that even with good mastering from a professional studio, there might still be some unwanted distortion at high levels.

Try and keep your peak levels between -6 and -3 at the most. This gives the mastering engineer something to work with. Avoid clipping at all costs! Clipping will just destroy your mix and mastering cannot fix this. Remember, unlike analog, in the digital realm there is NO headroom past 0db. Even if your peaks are at -10, and your mix is where you want it dynamically, a good ME can bring everything up to where it needs to be – no problem.

drbam

Wave Hammer works great for this. You can use it as effect on master track, or use it when you master in Sound Forge. It produces strong volume without clipping.

I have been using Sound Forge to master with very good results. Finished product sounds great with more presence than many commercial products. I couldn't live without "Wave Hammer". I remember before using wave hammer that I use to go through waves normalizing specific areas to get volume and presence I wanted. Wave Hammer does it for me. I was kind of suprised that I didn't see it mentioned in this thread.