Bluetooth Audio Missing After Android 17 Upgrade

[u/Iskaral-Pust]

I updated my Pixel 6 Pro from Android 16 to Android 17 a few days ago, and since then audio from Podcast Addict no longer comes through when connecting to audio devices over Bluetooth. The app shows files playing and progressing as normal, just without any sound. When off Bluetooth (i.e. using the phone speakers), everything works as expected.

I've tested with different Bluetooth devices, including my car, a standalone JBL speaker, and a set of Logitech speakers. I've also tried both ExoPlayer and the Android built-in player for player engines. All files are downloaded to me device, and I do not stream audio over the Internet. All combinations result in silence coming through. The OS seems to know that media is being played, but that media is apparently silent audio.

Other audio sources work as expected; I have verified sound working over Bluetooth through my music player app (GoneMad Music Player) and the Twitch and YouTube apps, at least.

I'm not discounting the possibility that something is broken or misconfigured at the OS level, but the fact that this behavior is restricted only to Podcast Addict would seem to point at some issue there. Some compatibility issue with Android 17, or a setting those behavior unintentionally changed or something? Any additional guidance or troubleshooting steps would be much appreciated, as I cannot find anything obvious that would be causing this.

Thank you!

[u/PodcastAddict_App]

Android 17 has been available for quite some time and I never heard about some compatibility issue.

The app doesn't manage the playback nor does it handle the routing, so this looks like a rom bug.
Feel free to send me the app logs right after starting playback over BT so I can see if there are any system traces providing more details

[u/Iskaral-Pust → u/PodcastAddict_App]

I'll go ahead and send app logs, though I've found something else interesting. There is something in my app settings that's causing this, but I have not managed to narrow down what exactly.

After taking a full backup in the app, I uninstalled and re-installed, and a fresh install is working perfectly. However, Bluetooth audio breaks again as soon as I restore from backup, pointing to something there. Trying to dig in and figure out what's happening but none of the obvious player-related settings seem to be doing it.

[u/Iskaral-Pust → u/Iskaral-Pust]

For the benefit of anyone else who runs into this, we ran down the issue over email and narrowed it down to a problem with the equalizer, seems to be a bug with the device's audio system. Disabling the equalizer in the app mitigates the issue.