I think someone posted about the same problem a few months ago...
It's not something I've noticed myself, but then I'm not a DJ and I don't burn many music CDs (though the ones I can recall doing, for, e.g., a car trip, don't sound any quieter than any retail CD.)
I wonder if it's a function of the "Sound Check" system, which tries to balance different songs levels to the same – usually by making everything quieter. If you do a "get info" on a track you can see a "volume" rating which the adjustment Sound Check will make if it is turned on. (You can turn it on and off in the "Playback" area of Preferences.)
An interesting experiment would be to turn on Sound Check, take a song with a high negative "volume" rating, burn it, rip it back and see what the rating is after. Then repeat the experiment with Sound Check turned off.
I leave Sound Check turned off, as I don't trust its automatically produced volume ratings.
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