[Hillary Lorimer]

4 years late, but I’ve found the solution for anyone who stumbles across this cold and alone like I did.

Note that the way I’ve implemented this is kind of clunky since I was tiptoeing around our staff’s workflow, so you can adjust the sequence settings a different way if you so choose. The goal is to change your audio track type from “Standard” to “Mono.” I haven’t tried this with Stereo.

In your timeline you’ll see one A1 audio track with a master track attached to it. The master track will have a speaker icon next to it, and the A1 track will likely not.

You will need to make a new track with the desired settings, and then delete this old track. To do this go to Sequence > Add Tracks…

Change the number beside “Add” under “Video Tracks” to 0
Change the number beside “Add” under “Audio Tracks” to 1
Under “Track Type” select Mono
Press “okay”

Go back to “Sequence” and select “Delete Track…”
Uncheck “Delete Video Tracks”
Check “Delete Audio Tracks”
Select “Audio 1”
Press “okay”

You should now have 1 audio track in your timeline that has a speaker icon beside it.
Your audio will now export at the same level it was imported at.

For those who are curious, the dB drop is caused by different implementations of “Pan law” in different programs/track types, mentioned by Todd Kopriva above.