In Premiere Pro there are many ways to amplify an audio track:
- Expand the track, grab the volume level bar and pull it upwards
- Right-click the track, choose "Audio Gain" and either set a gain level or ask for normalization
- Adjust the faders on the Audio Clip or Audio Track mixer panels
- Adjust the fixed Volume effect on the audio clip.
- Apply an effect with inbuilt gain controls (e.g. Multiband Compressor)
Most of these are limited to +6dB, but you can just add a second Volume effect on top. The Multiband Compressor goes up to +18dB.
As to a track sounding 'tinny' - that means you've cut off too much of the low frequencies with your existing filters, or your mic/recorder wasn't up to scratch. Cheaper lav and shotgun mics tend to be very 'bright', amplifying the higher frequencies and pretty much killing the low end - unfortunately it's very hard to recover a flat response from a cheap mic.
Bear in mind there are five basic stages to audio editing (though they're often combines in a single effect and don't necessarily always happen in the same order):
- Equalization (adjusting the gain at different frequencies to improve tone or remove unwanted stuff)
- Noise reduction, of which there are many many different forms
- Compression (to increase 'loudness' by reducing the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest parts of the track)
- Normalization/limiting - to force the peaks below acceptable maxima, e.g. for broadcast, and to make all the clips the same
- Mixing - adjusting the volume and pan of each track to create the overall soundscape you want for the production
An EQ effect is used to bring out the tone of the vocals, provided it's there to be salvaged - there's a simple "vocal enhancer" effect that works OK sometimes but for learning it's useless as it doesn't tell you what it's doing. Some people will apply a standard EQ effect and adjust the gains to taste as they listen to playback (it helps to know what the person really sounded like!) and others will use the Multiband Compressor as an all-in-one effect, since it replicates the functionality of an EQ, compressor and limiter. Don't expect to just drop an effect on the track and hear perfection, it takes practice to know what all the sliders are for. Some effects have presets to get you pointed in the right direction and experienced editors will build up a mountain of their own presets for different combinations of voice, mic, scene, etc. but you won't get anywhere just twiddling random knobs, you need a feel for what's wrong and how each effect can (or can't) help you fix it.
There's a bunch of tutorials online, here's a quite detailed on on the MBC effect - Premiere Pro CC: Boost and Smooth Audio Levels | Final Cut Pro Training & Classes
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