How do i get a nice level song using Reason 3?

First of all i´m sorry if someone posted this before but i have to get this off my mind.
I use Reason 3 to make all the instruments and compose the songs and i suppose that i have to arrange them in a way that there´s no clipping or something like that in the beat, but in that stage when i compare them to another beats from other songs i see that there´s a lot of difference in levels and that my song is like in the end of a tunnel. "Wouldn't it be so much better if some programs gave u the chance to produce the beat allready with decent levels of quality?!" I work with an M-audio fW 410 @ 24/96 all the time ( it should be a very standard quality) and then i use Adobe Audition to edit the vocals and other stuff. Tried to boost the levels to match the ones i heard, but then it just distortion in packs! Just wanted to know if there's a way to get decent levels before i get the mixdown to Audition and set the entire song.
any help is welcome because this is just buggin' me all the time!
thanx in advance.
i have some samples of one song i tried to make with it. if u ask i can post it here.
Peace

I'd say posting a sample is always the best way to go. Let's hear it.

Chris

ok here they are! my sample and my firend's sample!
You be the judge of it.

I usually let AA 1.5 Caculate the song teh preview make a lil higher or lower then keep it. If im making loops trough reason then each sond has a different sound.

Well...

I'd say volume is the last of your worries at this point. You have a lot of work to do just learning how to create the music itself. Really, the biggest difference between your friend's track and yours is the quality of the sounds/samples. Yours sounds like it was done on a Casio keyboard. It's really not anywhere near where you want to be for creating beats.

Just keep working on the music itself. It's way too early to worry about making it as loud as everybody else.

Cheers,
Chris

groucho i think in part you're right, but that doesn't helps me much. note that i didn't mix and finished playing all the instruments in the entire song itself yet, and i use all the original samples of reason3 and play them on a midi keyboard. i think they are very standard quality (as i allready saw nice levelled songs being made with them) or else they woudn't be there. i think the difference that you noted was that the other beat is of a different style of mine and has vocals in it, i just chosed that one because i think it has a very punchy bass response (any other would be fine to compare with). anyway if there's a really crappy sample being played in a song there must be a way of getting it to sound better (but that's not the question here), so the question remains about the levels and how could i get the song to have a nice overall level.
thanx again

Well, a big part of that "punchy" sound is compression. Have you played with AA's dynamics processor?

If not, that's a place to start.

Chris

thanx again groucho but as i see it compression could only be applyed to one instrument at a time isn´t that right? so i would have to bring each instrument i played in reason to AA and then edit them?    indeed i tried fooling around with compression a bit and also in reason, but to no avail...
guess i´ll have to try harder...

so i would have to bring each instrument i played in reason to AA and then edit them?  

Yep - it's called mixing.

You seem to be looking for shortcuts here, but there's really no way around it: you just gotta take your time and learn how to do this stuff. There's a ton of online reading you can do about compression to help learn how to use it. Ditto for eq/mix techniques/etc.

Compression is also frequently applied to the mix bus (mixdown), but your first step is to bring your tracks into the multitrack and work on getting them to all sound good together.

That will probably mean some compression and eq. But it will also mean getting a good arrangement and some good-sounding samples to begin with. Just because they're available in Reason doesn't mean they're automatically "good". It's really easy to make some awful-sounding crap using those programs. It all depends on how you put it all togther.

Chris