Item normalization in Reaper 7.X

Hello, I am running into a potential item volume issue I never experienced with Reaper 6.X. If I use the Normalize function for an item and set normalization value to say -4dB, and if the volume fader for the track is at 0 and no plugins are on, I can expect the track Vu meter to read -4dB at the peak of the item, right? That's what always happened in 6.X. Super-reliable item volume control method. Now, however, the peak on the track vu meter reads as 1.7 dB above the normalization value, -3.3dB in this case. I may be missing something simple here, but I had never seen that happening before. Any hints welcome. Kind Regards, Pat

Item volume knob vs item properties volume 

I tried different things to solve the issue above. I checked track metering was on peak, not RMS: it was on peak, which is what I want. Just in case I switched stereo peak to multichannel and vice versa, that made no difference. Now there is another thing I find surprising, and again I don't remember this behaviour in Reaper 6.X : on some occasions using the normalization function (item right-click pop-up menu > Item processing > Normalize items (Peak/RMS/LUFS)...) on the very same item the volume changed was performed by acting on the volume knob/bar visible on the item, but the volume as shown in item proprerties remained unchanged. Other times it was the opposite, the item property box volume was where the cut or boost is registered. I am baffled. There must be some parameter messing with item volume consistency. Was there any change made in the approach to item volume as we switched to Reaper 7?

Can you possibly share the project, cropped to just the one track and the one media item, and also share the media file? That will make it much easier to explain what's going on.

So I managed to extract the project with the anomaly still active and boil it down to a stripped-down version, one track, one item. I couldn't upload it here, possibly because it is a bit above the max size (it's 3.6 MB), so here is a google drive link: It is a basic sketch audio recording, guitar, condenser mic, 80 BPM. Marker 01 is placed just before where the item's peak occurs, which should be at -12dB, since that is the (peak) level I normalized the item to. The track has no plugins on, and volume is at 0 (unity gain) but when the playhead reaches the peak I get the reading -10.3 dB, so 1.7 dB above expected level.. Interestingly, this is the same difference [Actually it isn't, as a CraigPatterson kindly pointed out below] I was getting when I normalized to -4 dB, and was getting a track peak reading of -3.3dB [which is a difference of 0.7 dB, not 1.7 dB. What kind of arithmetic was I inventing? :). It is nevertheless a difference: the two peaks' values don't coincide.]

File access denied...

Pan-correlated?... Really? 

Better late than never :)