I've been trying to figure out a way to make an mp3 louder without ruining the quality of the sound, but I don't think I have the right stuff to do it.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might go about this, or know of any programs that can raise volume without losing sound quality?

compression is the weapon of choice in the recording industry for such things. companies fight for the best compression software so they can have the loudest damn cd's in the world.

you can do this with a compressor, as mentioned, and while it doesnt necessarily cause clipping (as long as you dont peak over 0dB), it will make the track less dynamic (as inri mentioned) and reoccuring compressors will make background sounds completely disappear in the mix

if the song is already very silent though i guess a simple limiter should do the job

to do any of those things however you need a DAW and a compressor and a minimal knowledge of mastering (to be able to use the compressor)

I thought had replied to this already =\

Anyway the freeware program Audacity has a basic software compressor and is pretty easy to figure out.  If you apply to amplify filter up to 0 dB and then apply compression, you should get reasonable results for your application (I am assuming you aren't mastering a labor of love like a new album or anything so it should be fine).  You can also sometimes cheat and amplify up to 1 dB or sometimes as much as 3 dB without any audible clipping.

Yeah, I use Audacity already.  Upping the dB is what I've been doing so far, but it doesn't quite cut it before the sound quality gets crappy.  I'll try compressing it, too, but I have very limited knowledge of these things.  Thanks, everybody! (other advice is still good, too)

and be sure to download all those extra audacity plugins, you'll get some more compression plugins i think

also i dont know if audacity has a dB meter but I'm guessing it has

with that you can listen through the track while monitoring it and see how high it peaks. if it peaks at maximum -3dB you can increase the track volume by 3dB so that it peaks at 0dB. If it already peaks at 0dB then you definately don't want to increase dB but use a compressor. At any point the track goes over 0dB you generally will experience some form of clipping (also note that some software has automatic limiting to avoid it reaching 0dB as well so you might consider that. and if you ever want to take your songs to a club (what) most clubs have a limiter treshold at -3 dB).