[Whopbamboom]

Thanks for the tips!

I went ahead and ripped the file as a .wav and not an .mp3 as the other program did, then took that .wav file and used compression on it with Audacity before amplifying (also with Audacity).

Yes, Audacity used actual dB's instead of a "percent of the original". Made it a little harder to anticipate the results ahead of time, and it took several tries, but I was finally able to get something better than before. However, it doesn't appear that I can go any further due to distortions that are beginning to happen, and I even tried using a compress-amplify-compress-amplify approach at one point just to see if that would help.

The final edit that I have MIGHT be good enough for the project at hand, but if I can schedule one more last-minute recording session, I might just re-record. That being said, do you have any tips for getting a louder recorded volume the first time? Perhaps they needed a compressor in the system at the beginning?? And/or an amplifier of some sort??

Thanks again for all your help!