Evening out the volume on a playlist

If you normalized the tracks, then they will all have the same maximum peak level - that’s what normalizing does.
Peak level is NOT the same as “loudness”. Loudness is subjective, not an absolute measure. The only really accurate way to determine whether one track is louder than another is to listen to them.

Listening is the best way. Because loudness is a matter of how we “perceive” the sound, it is the only really “accurate” way - and your idea of “loud” may be slightly different to my idea of “loud” (though generally people tend to agree more or less, so long as they do not suffer from hearing problems.

Well there is an “approximate” way that may be close enough. I wrote a plug-in that attempts to adjust the levels of tracks to about the same “loudness”. In my tests it is usually fairly close, but you can let me know what you think. The plug-in is available here: ReplayGain plug-in
The download to use is the link that says “New Version”.
The only documentation for that plug-in is in that forum topic.