What’s the reason behind Renoise’s uneven level of sound? I’m not really sure how to explain this, but I swear that every note/hit of, say, a snare or kick comes out at a different volume level/who knows what else. When using a compressor plugin, the gain reduction (GR) is always different on each hit. Sometimes it won’t go above a mere 0.2dB for ages, while then all of a sudden it soars right up to 7.5dB, when all I want it to do is a constant 4dB. What’s the deal with this?
as I understand it, you are referring to dynamics right?
Uneven levels as you call them are a must with mixing waves.
If you have 2 sinus waves for example and multipy them you get 2x more amplitude. But it you halve both waves before multiplying them you will get 1x original amplitude… but this is only the case when 2 EXACT waves are encountered. in most cases they are not that same so it can be amplified quite much.
but then when some of these kick in you get distorsion. The solution?
Probably good compression on instruments and later on final output would be help to get even levels. Actually, that is what is compressor for to reduce dynamics in sound to make it more even.
This problem happens in all sound mixing stuff and not only with Renoise. Blame your physics teacher and laws of nature for this 
No, that’s not quite what I meant. I understand the use for a compressor, and in fact this is what I am using. What I find is that when using a compressor however, the resulting sound coming out is always different, even if the input is the same.
For example, say I place snare hits at 0, 10, 20 and 30 intervals. I then load a compressor plugin, adjust the settings (attack 1.0 ms; release 8 ms, to be exact, i.e. they are appropriate values and the release doesn’t overlap the next note), and play the pattern. The particular plugin I’m using shows an indication of the amount of gain reduction that occurs when the input sound is compressed. Now the thing is that this doesn’t remain steady as I had with Modplug Tracker. Sometimes a GR of 0.2dB occurs, other times 7.5dB. So something isn’t quite right…
maybe its an graphical update problem of the compressorplug. have you tried it in windowed and fullscreenmode or after rendering the track to wav ?
Sounds reasonable it’s a graphic update problem. With a difference from 0.2 to 7.5dB the difference should be (very) audible!
Johan, you’re right, it would be very audible (never really thought about that). And after checking some other plugins of the same set (EQ, reverb, etc.), I notice that the input levels stay at a constant -5.9dB. So, it must be just the compressor plugin that updates funny. That’s annoying though, as I really need that GR value to be accurate. 
As for windowed mode: Trying to do that always crashes the program. And I can’t render since I haven’t registered yet. But I will be soon so I guess I’ll have to try it then. 