Guitar hacker has the best suggestion I see, but you may also consider reviewing your faders (sliders). If your busses are too low, highlight all your busses (except master buss), hold down [Ctrl] and raise one. The rest will follow in the same logarithmic %, attempting to keep your mix in order. If your busses are already about 0db, but the signal is quiet, you might consider doing this same procedure for all your main tracks. If you're clipping somewhere, you may look at possibly adding a 0db limiter just to that one track to ensure a single transient doesn't clip your buss or master. But don't use the limiter to raise the level of the track/buss.
 
Aside from that, I agree with most of the others. Unless you're getting some machine noise from the low levels, the ME can bring the levels up for you. In fact, they may prefer to do that. Maybe send a single song sample of about 10-15 seconds to the ME and ask.
 
 

Why???
 
Or rather, to what level are you referring, peaks, rms, average??? And of course what style of music?
 
I kinda like the openness of 18 dB of room for peaks - in fact musical peaks can exceed 18 dB! And you aren't losing a lot of bits by providing some breathing room...

my first double post...

fitzj
I have a stereo track that I recorded from a console which is around -18db. I need to get it up to around -6db before I send it for mastering. I tried a gain envelope and then used a compressor. It seems to make the track a bit  harsh. 
What is the best way to do this?

Harsh is a big word, define harsh. I have used a comp without compression as a gain booster, and I've used expanders, with and without expansion as gain boosters, EQs, with and without equalization, and, believe it or not, gain plugs. Hi freq reverb adjustment. Reverb foldback levels. Gain knobs on pre's, power amps, powered speakers, faders, boost buttons and even hearing aids.
 
Ok, NOT hearing aids.
Yet.
 
Why am I typing all this?
 
Cuz in the time it takes you to read it, you could have defined "harsh" and thougth up ten different gain strategies to negate some or all of the negative benefits of "harsh" and be well on your way to implementing and comparing them.
 
I am not giving you any grief at all, because asking a wide audience for both standard practices and suggestions is an excellent move, BUT...
 
You are going to audition some or all of the suggestions given and judge the results, so you might as well be working on your own ideas to see ...a lot of different things....like how well you can anticipate industry standard answers, how innovative you are, who here gives advice that works for your ears, and how well your equipment and software options fit into the bellcurve.
 
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The more actions you can pop out of your pocket and predict the outcome of, the more you have mastered your world, and the more likely you are to spend your time breaking gound no one else has tread before.

Many thanks for all the replies. I tried them all  and will take Seth advice and leave it to the mastering guys. All will do what was  suggested on here and which I tried previously before posting  but these methods take out some of the transients and  makes it sound compressed. These methods I guess would be ok if you were  only going up  a few db's. Anything more than 10db it does not work very well.  As I mentioned I have only a stereo track of the show so I cannot play around with individuals tracks as someone mentioned. If i had the opportunity again I would have gone for a hotter input  from the console but stuck with what I have now.

Good call letting the ME do it. But I thought it should be pointed out that no simple gain operation will alter the dynamic range. The hotter signal may sound compressed, but that's just a psycho-acoustic effect or possibly a function of your monitoring system or room acoustics.
 
Also, just incidentally, if you wanted to normalize to -6dB, you should use 50%.
 
 

"These methods I guess would be ok if you were only going up a few db's. Anything more than 10db it does not work very well."

This is 100% incorrect. In the analogue domain, it could have an audible effect, but in digital, it's just math.

If its starting to sound harsh when its turned up loud, it's because it IS harsh... It's not due to the gain you applied. The harshness is in the original track. A perfect job for an ME to work on. Mention it to him that you find it an issue so he addresses it specifically. Assuming you can trust your monitors, of course ;)