I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but although a limiter (compressor with massive ratio and typically high threshold) will crush audio, the level of the signal into that limiter is incredibly important.
The audio going in should be on par with what the limiter is designed to work with (so the threshold is actually seeing signal cross it), but I haven't seen (or blindly missed) mention of fader adjustment in this thread.
Volume alone will blow ear drums, no compression/limiting required. What compression/limiting does is raise the overall output by removing dynamic range. Because of the "don't clip" boundary, a fader can only take you so loud (which is where the limiter comes in). Just be careful of the signal in (don't feed a limiter a weak signal and compensate accordingly), and settings on that limiter.
Jeff Evans wrote an exceptional post on compressor set up long ago, but I am on my cell so will never find it.