Volume fluctuates listening to music

[Guster]

Whenever I play music on my Samsung Galaxy A71, the volume fluctuates terribly. It sounds a bit like someone is turning the volume down on the loud bits, then turns it up for the quiet bits. It's like some kind of automatic volume compression. It makes listening to music unbearable because it's not subtle at all, it's quite prominent.  It happens when I play mp3 files with the Play Music app, and also listening to YouTube or anything else. It happens both with my Bluetooth headphones and with my wired headphones.  This leads me to conclude it is a problem with the phone itself rather than any particular app or accessory.  To clarify, the volume setting itself doesn't visibly change, it is just how it sounds during music playback. There is obviously some kind of algorithm or effect or something operating on the sound output. I wish I knew what it is. It was fine up until about 2 weeks ago, then it suddenly started happening. It's rendered my phone unusable for music.

[nowdeleted]

are you listening online or do you have music on your phone ?? ie sd card or phone storage?

[Guster]

The mp3 files are on the phone storage, not the sd card, although I don't think that's relevant to the problem I described. When I listen to music on YouTube it's online.

[nowdeleted]

YouTube is internet, so it could mean your phone does not have a stable connection. How did you save to your phone ?? as that is possible another problem

[Guster]

My internet connection is fine, but that's completely irrelevant, the problem is that the volume fluctuates when I listen to music.

[nowdeleted]

does it just happen when you have Bluetooth turned on ?? can you use wired headphones... just to see if they work better than Bluetooth

[Guster · Accepted solution]

As stated in my original post:

"It happens both with my Bluetooth headphones and with my wired headphones."

However the unexpected good news is, after installing the latest software update to my phone from Samsung this evening, the problem appears to be fixed, much to my surprise and relief.  I can now enjoy listening to music again!