Yeah, you want the limiter, not auto levels. The limiter just flattens out the peaks to avoid clipping; auto levels tend to raise the gain during quiet bits and lower it during the loud ones, which is very much not what you want.
(The very first recording I made in the digital era, I managed to have clipping all of one set, and auto levels all of the other, thanks to not knowing what I was doing with a minidisc with Japanese-language controls. I think I mildly prefer the clipped set...)