Track sounds too quiet

[ulterior]

maybe ur ears have been damaged lately hahahah

[steevio]

i listened to your track and thought it sounded fine.
you cant expect all tracks to have the same power, every track is different.
squashing the life out of a track just to get equal power is crazy IMO,
i always allow my tracks to have their own identity, and to breath.
there's always been this mad obsession in EDM to get absolute maximum power at all costs and to compete with everybody else. you can either join the madness or just let the DJ turn the gain knob 5 degrees and let your track make its own statement.
a slightly quieter track never stopped me buying a good record ever !

When using a Maximizer or something similar is that compressing as well? I have recently sent some stuff off to be mastered for vinyl and decided against using anything out the master out because I thought the mastering engineer would prefer it if he had more headroom. I mean after all the mastering engineer is going to have far better equipment, then the Reason 4 mastering suite. Am I right in thinking this?

yes.
i wouldnt use a maximizer if you're sending your music to be cut.
(in fact i wouldnt use a maximizer at all)
a lot of the discussions about mastering on the forum ignore the fact that many musicians these days are unlikely to have their music put on a vinyl record. so if youre putting your stuff out on a regular basis on beatport or whatever, how can you afford to send your music to be professionally mastered ? this is always my argument for learning the process yourself.
but if its going to be cut, and you arent experienced enough, leave it to the engineer.
personally i master my own tracks and ask the engineer to do as little as possible, just basic light limiting to bring the level up, i dont want him to mess with my EQ or dynamics, if i've spent weeks getting exactly how i want it. often if anything drastic has to be done, its because of high freqencies which the cutting lathe doesnt like, so nowadays i'm very carefull not to overdo the top end.
theres been lots of discussions on here about mastering, check out some of the other threads mate,

[andei]

finally the track which originated the post end up sounding way better (at least to my ears) so thanks to everyone.

i was planning to post the full track but as i realized i'd liked to try hitting on some labels to see what they think, i uploaded a sample
here it is: http://www.zshare.net/audio/1499410964b6c964/

Any tips on labels i could contact?