Posted on 
Sep 01, 2006 09:48 am if the individual tracks don't clip, then you're fine. just turn down the master.
If you haven't mixed yet, then your not at the point of worrying about levels.
First, you record quality tracks, making sure there's good signal strength, without clipping. It seems you've done that (hopefully). So if there's no problems with the track, like bad playing, mess-ups, etc., then you shouldn't re-track.
Second, mix the levels so that they're nice together. Don't worry about overall level here, just make the individual tracks work together. Turn them all down in your software mixer, or turn down the software master, or both. Don't worry about overall volume here, either. Just worry about the individual parts working together.
Here you can think about overall volume, but I wouldn't focus on it, focus on mixing.
Third (loosely), mix the tracks down to a stereo track, then listen to that for level (and other things). This is where you can adjust for level. Use compression, EQ, Har-Bal, whatever, to get the levels where you're happy. Try not to overcompress though, as it's considered bad form by audio techs =).
One point I think I might explain more, is that the idea of recording hot is so that you get the most signal compared to the inherent 'noise' of your system. This could be 60hz hum, AC motors, computer noise, etc. The bigger the signal is, the less the noise will interfere. This is called signal to noise ratio, or SNR. So if you're recording your tracks at -12, and you can turn them up without any background noise coming through, then you should be in good shape.
A point to be aware of, though, is that when you keep adding tracks, the background noise keeps building up, and adding to itself, to where there's a bunch of it when listening to 20 tracks. This is why you want the SNR to be very high (lots of signal, very little noise), because it'll creep up on you, if you don't watch out.
I think you're probably in good shape though, just turn down the individual levels some, or the master, and mix away!
