While the “loudness wars” seem to thankfully be winding down, that doesn’t mean you don’t want the level of your mixes to be as high as possible while still retaining natural dynamics. One of the “secret weapons” of highly regarded professional mixing engineers such as Michael Brauer and Andrew Scheps is to use parallel compression to raise the average level of a mix, without just squashing the peaks.
Parallel compression is a process by which, either through busing your souce material to the compressor on an auxiliary track, or by using a mix knob on your compressor, you combine both the compressed and uncompressed source material in your mix. By including both the compressed and uncompressed signal, you increase the volume of the source material. However, since the compressed signal has had its peaks reduced, you raise the average level of the overall signal, without raising the level of the peaks. This is a great way to increase the perceived volume of your mix without raising the level of the peaks, or requiring the peaks to be squashed to death.