Design view track clips, rendered .wav files doesn't

[MonoTeksist]

I solo'd a track from my song and the peak level clipped at 9.85dB in design view, yet when I rendered the same track to .wav and looked at it in Audacity, I figured out it's only -5.1dB (by normalizing until I didn't see any change any more pre and post that action).
That's Ableton telling me the track is almost 15dB louder than it actually is.
So that's being confirmed by a FREEWARE app vs one that costs 100s of Euros ... this frustrates me to no end: how am I supposed to deliver my stems to a mixing engineer when I'm having these hocus-pocus numbers?
Should I just ignore design view peak level numbers and go with what a freebie audio editor tells me?

One more thing: the track in question is part of a group (which also peaks at 9.85dB), and that group is part of another group (which peaks at 8.85dB).
I don't know if this has any bearing since my brain is slowly turning into half a dozen scrambled eggs.
Some more info: some tracks have peak levels of -0.65dB, -14.7dB, -0.10dB ... but when rendered and played back the song sounds not at all wrong.

I just don't know any more ...

[MonoTeksist]

Is there an Ableton Live forum elsewhere which DOESN'T look like a graveyard?
2900+ views and ONE reply: by myself ...
Most threads get pretty much ignore in here, or is Ableton Live a fake-professional DAW?

[Tarekith]

If you don’t like the forums you don’t have to use them. Remember, these aren’t official tech support forums, just for users to discuss Live and occasional help each other out if they can. The fact no one knows what you mean by design view probably doesn’t help either.