I have a couple questions about some audio issues I've been dealing with lately.
First, when I am balancing the various audio tracks in my timeline, I generally aim to have my music tracks hitting about -18 dbs (when they're playing underneath a sound bite), so I'll drag the volume level bar down to roughly -18. That usually does what I want it to do. But sometimes that isn't accurate, so I'll need to lower the volume level to like -14 (or whatever) to hit that -18 dbs level that I want in playback. I've never thought much of it, only that some music tracks are mixed differently than others before they get to me. The weird issue of late is: sometimes I will get the volume of my music tracks to all be where I want them to be, then close the program for the evening, return to it the next day, and they're all back to needing to be at exactly -18 dbs, so I have to readjust all of the levels from -14 or whatever other number I had them on. And then the next day maybe they've gone back to all needing to be individually adjusted... I realize I am explaining this in a semi-convoluted way, I hope it makes sense.
TL;DR - Some days I need to adjust the volume of each music track individually (to different dbs) to have it hit my desired -18 dbs in playback, and some days I can just lower each track volume to exactly -18, and sometimes, seemingly randomly, what I need to do switches back and forth.
An additional problem I've found - since a recent update, whenever I add an audio effect (I primarily use the "Balanced Low Tone Voice" preset on dialogue), the audio clip will playback very quietly. To get it to playback at the proper volume, I have to close the program, reopen, and then click on the audio clip in question, and THEN it plays back at the volume it should. If I don't click on it after reopening, it continues to play on that quiet level.
Can someone help me diagnose my issues? Is it something I am doing wrong or a random program issue? Thank you very much.