Hi there Mark, welcome to the forum.
You've already had some great advice from Bob and Charlie, and I'll add a little to what they've said.
Bear in mind though that, although
Guitar Tracks 4 is undoubtedly a very capable program, as a sort of 'light' version of
Guitar Track Pro 4 it is somewhat limited in flexibility and can only be used to create relatively unsophisticated mixes.
If you're serious about really taking control of your mixes, I'd certainly recommend that you take a look at some of Cakewalk's other products.
I you're interested at any stage, check out the features of some of them here:
* Guitar Tracks Pro 4 * SONAR X2 Essential * SONAR X2 Studio * SONAR X2 Producer * The full SONAR features are listed
HERE * There's a detailed comparison chart for all three SONAR versions
HERE And one thing to remember, if you do decide to upgrade to any of these products, you will, as a registered user of GT4, be entitled to a quite significant upgrade discount on your purchase.
Anyway, that's all by the by for the moment, let's see if we can help you a bit more with GT4.
As the guys have mentioned, the all important thing when getting mixes that are 'loud' enough, and more importantly getting all your mixes consistently at the same level, is getting the gain staging correct. At the most basic level, this simply means that you end up with a mix in which the
sum level of all your tracks is at a
reasonably high level without ever clipping the 'Main' (often also called 'Master') meter. If you do hit the very top of the main meter, your will cause the signal to overload (same as 'clipping') and you will have a mix that contains very unpleasant digital distortion artefacts at the points where the signal is too hot.
The best way to avoid this when mixing might be to start off by bringing down the faders of all your individual tracks. Once you have done this, you can gradually begin to mix your tracks by gradually increasing the levels on the individual tracks. As you continue the mixing process in this way by gradually increasing the levels of all the individual tracks, you will notice that the main meter's level will start rising. Keep an eye on it the whole time and ensure that as you are increasing the levels of all your tracks, this
never hits the top.
Here's what I'm getting at. Imagine you're mixing your song and all the instruments are all nicely balanced related to each other. If you check your main meter and it's way down here in the green area, your exported mix will be quiet:
By way of contrast, if the main meter is up here, right at the very top and hitting the red-line, your mix will clip and most likely be unusable:
The ideal mix is when your main meter
occasionally rises into the orange region (but doesn't
ever hit the red):
You might also want to try using the built-in Limiter in GT4's Master FX area to increase the overall levels of your mixes without clipping.
Once you've got your mix somewhere near the ideal levels (as shown in example #3 above), turn on the Limiter in the Master FX section by clicking on the small button next to its name. Once the Limiter is switched on, this button will turn green:
Basically what the Limiter does is to bring up the levels of all the quieter audio in your song to the same level as the loudest audio in your song. The further you increase the boost (by turning the dial clockwise), the more drastic the effect becomes.
Starting at 0dB (fully counter-clockwise), gradually increase the level of the Limiter and you should notice that the apparent overall level of your song will increase.
However, it's not a good idea to just dial the compressor to maximum and leave it there! A limiter is actually a specialised form of audio
compressor. A compressor is used in exactly the same way to raise the levels of the quieter passages in a song, a limiter just has a kind of built-in 'fail-safe' setting that prevents the signal you're compressing from clipping. The problem with any kind of compressor is that, as it's constantly working to analyse and modify the signal, it can cause very noticeable audio artefacts. The more work the compressor is doing, the more noticeable the artefacts become. Most often, these artefacts create a 'pumping' sensation that quickly becomes very tiring to listen to.
So the best advice here would be to (quite literally) 'use you ears'. Start low and gradually increase the Limiter and you should hear the overall level of your song increase. Once you begin to hear the 'pumping' in the song, you've gone too far so start dialling back the Limiter until this effect disappears.
Hope that all makes sense Mark, fire back with any furthers questions you have and we'll try to get you sorted.
Steve