cant get my levels up high enough

[cakewalkgg]

if you can get the mix to sound good overall you can use a mastering or brickwall limiter to get some more volume also. set the output ceiling to -.1db and reduce the threshold untill your getting good volume withough audibly squishing or pumping of the limiter.
its much more important imho to get the mix to sound good than it is to get max volume from a limiter.. limiting reduces dynamic range.. so your really trying to bring the lower volume sounds closer to the loudest sounds.. smash it all together so you can bring all the volume up... not everyone likes the results. If your a slipknot fan.. then smash it!

[VTR]

It sounds like you are trying to ice the cake while still baking it.

Mix your tracks to about -15 dBfs. That equates to about +4dB in the analogue domain. If the faders seem too low, you set the recording levels too high.You may notice the meters are colored green down there.

This may even make it sound better.

Once it's mixed, feel free to just normalise it to -1dBfs or smash it to death with compression / limiting to taste. At least you will have an idea of what it did sound like beforehand.

[pounamu]

Get your drums working with your bass track. If you are using live drums get your individual drum volumes (whether the hit velocity or with mic placement) sorted. Cymbals can cut through when not seeming to. As I said previously execute your hits with finesse with regard to volume (listen back to the track and dissect your playing volumes, the more erratic the more difficult it is to get a good compression), take care with your feeling and you will get a good mix. After put in your compression. The "Hot" track starts with a good even first recording, generally.
Pounamu

[pounamu]

What you could do is go through the Wave file you have. Adjust the volumes on the peaks to give you a nice even track volume wise. Render that track only to hard disk then import into your project and start compressing with and even track!
Pounamu