Thank you for the reply. I'm not familiar with what that means though, or exactly what you're asking me to do. Is there a thread that can help me understand what a loudness log is and how to do what you're asking? Are you asking me to simply put the rendered waveform on the timeline and screenshot it?

@skrootayp The answer is in the fourth post in this thread where John provides an image showing where the option is https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/changing-playback-rate-disables-the-volume-effect--143089/#ca894719

Since @EricLNZs memory is better than mine, I often repeat myself. We want to see proof that something measurable changed at render time before we go chasing around.

Learn about the Loudness Meters and how to Generate a Loudness Log and you'll be further down the road to understanding what you hear (or don't hear, as in my case).

Since @EricLNZs memory is better than mine,

Actually it's not my memory but the Forum search function. After all skrootayp did ask "Is there perhaps an existing thread on this?"

(first is project log, then rendered project log)

It appears the render is different based on the contrast in the log numbers. From here, how do I determine what the issue is and how to address whatever's causing the render to be so different from the uniform mix I hear when listening to the project itself pre-render?

Divide the Loudness Log and the rendered sections until you find where the difference is going astray. From here on, it's manual labor.

Can you say that a bit more laymanesque? 😌

Render out a section at a time and do a loudness log on one section at a time? Maybe use markers to keep track of which one is which?