Audio clips too quiet at max volume

Question

After putting audio from STP into an FCP project, some friends and I turned the volume all the way up in the audio editor window. Even after doing that, however, it's still way too quiet. Is there any other way to raise the volume so that the audio is loud enough?
iBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   1.42 GHz Power PC G4 1GB DDR SDRAM

Answer 1

I have never liked that "duplicate the track" to make it louder method. When you duplicate the track, you're also duplicating the noise floor, making the background noise twice as loud, too.
If you've got the audio track open in Soundtrack Pro, use the compression plugin, or dynamics, or whatever they call it in Soundtrack (I use Cubase). Use that to bring the level up. What you'll also get with the compression plugins (not the same as video compression, don't worry about that) is it will bring the low level audio up and the high level audio down to even it out. It won't raise the noise floor as much because when audio drops below a certain level (set this right ABOVE your noise floor/room noise) it stops raising the low level audio. That way you have a more even level throughout the track. How does the mix of the announcers on the NFL on FOX always sound so good when it's live? Compression. Keep your levels in check.
So use the compression plugins to even out your sound, maxing out at about -1db. Export it.
Now, import that track into FCP and bring the level DOWN to -12ish.
Much cleaner and audio way of raising levels. Duplicating the clip to make it louder is not the way an audio facility would do it. It's a quick video guy way of doing it. It does the job, but not well.