Two complaints weeks apart that sounded unrelated — "the kick doesn't hit" and
"the WAP bass is saturated" — turned out to be the same orbit. d4 is 76-91% of
the low-frequency bed floor on every buried track AND the exposed bass in WAP.
One stem, two jobs, both done badly at different moments, which is what
livecoding does to an orbit and what a set-wide mix decision cannot see.

Punch median 8.3 -> 10.3 dB, buried tracks two -> one, both masters landing on
4786.370000 s so the fifteen approved boundaries survived untouched.

The shareable part is the near-miss: the first render improved every track,
INCLUDING the seven with no correction applied. Good numbers, would have
shipped. What stopped it was asking why the untouched tracks moved — the
balance was attenuating one side instead of holding constant power, so nine
pans were also nine undeclared level cuts being credited to the deliberate
work. After the fix the median went 10.4 -> 10.3: the result was real and the
explanation had been wrong, which is the failure that survives review because
nobody audits a number they like.