Phones and consumer video cameras all use substantial compression. Desktop recording software, however, does not. Various freeware exists, but to be safe, spend $20 or so for apps like Audio Recording Wizard. Also, Audacity, available free with some hardware, has good editing capacity.
After doing an uncompressed recording, my software (I use SoundForge for final editing) and others have an option called "normalize", which will increase playback level to a standard signal strength. You can either choose "peak level" which is only volume change, but also a compression setting as in "Normalize using---" and then you choose a sound level as the benchmark. For example, choosing -18 db makes for a slight compression, and it will sound very normal. Choosing a higher level, like -4 db, will mean a lot of compression.
All broadcast (and streaming) uses fairly substantial compression, so it's smart to use the least amount reasonable for the main edit. It will get further compressed at YouTube. SoundCloud does not compress, to my ears.
Best results will always be achieved using close miking, and adding reverb later. If using a phone or video camera with internal microphone, the sound will be the sound of the room, which then clashes with the sound of the room of the listener (unless they listen on headphones). I prefer to record audio alongside video, and drop the edited soundtrack into the video. That allows close miking and sweetening like reverb and EQ, as well as normalizing the playback level.
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