Chronology for editing audition files and mastering for a cd

I recently recorded seven talks at a conference, to be burned to seven different cds.

When I began editing the talks, I realized that the volume of the speaker was louder than people asking questions.  I also heard some electronic interference.

When i hit speech volume levelizer, it seeme to make the normal breathing of the speaker distorted, which made me have to go back and re-edit all of them out, or convert to “silence”..  Also i tried noise reduction, and that seemed to give an echo to the speakers voice.

So here’s my question:

1) Should I be using Speech volume levelizer FIRST, prior to editing or is there a different way?

2) Noise and crackling.. suggestions?

3) when i am complete.. should i be saving the file at a certain volume for CD’s, and do i have to do anything to make sure that all of the cd’s have a consistent audio experience.

4) I am thinking of sending the completed files to a third party service to replicate.. do i have to create a Master.. or if i duplicate in house, do i need to create a MASTER, and what does this entail.

Thank you.. i am new to all of this, and feel like i’m spending way too much time redoing things