There’s a lot of places were volume can be set, so there’s lots of way to mess up…
Here’s an exemple showing 7 different layers of volume all impacting an unique sound asset. With nested instruments and more complex routing, you can even imagine more levels.
1: Volume of the multi-instrument entry
2: Volume of the multi-instrument
3: Volume of the track
4: Volume of the master track
5-6-7: Volume of all the busses in the routing chain, from the lower to the master (exemple taken from the highlighted event)
Not to mention other modifiers, such as:
- some effets (“gain” or “limiter”, for instance)
- the impact of the spatializer (I came up once with a spatializer mistakenly duplicated on the instrument track, as well as on the master track)
- automation on 1, 2, 3… to 7, or on effects
- snapshots on 5, 6 or 7, or on bus effects
- VCAs