Android, Can't change volume of podcasts

[leostaley]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

Sony Xperia xz1 compact

Operating System

Android 8.0 

My Question or Issue

While listening to the Happiness Lab podcast, I discovered that I could not change the volume playing out of the speaker of my device. There are no other devices connected to it; I am playing audio through the phone's main speaker. 

When I press the volume buttons on my device, the slider for the media audio channel displays, and moves properly as I press the buttons, but the actual volume level stays the same (close to max volume I presume). I can even mute all the audio channels on my device, and the Spotify podcast continues to play at that loud level. 

If I go and play music through the app, the problem resolves, and volume can be changed as normal. This problem only occurs while listening to podcasts. 

The problem persists when I plug in normal headphones. 

[leostaley]

Well, I solved that faster than I thought:

To regain control of the audio, In Android "audio settings," I disabled the "ClearAudio+" option, an option which, I think, is only available on Sony phones. This made the volume buttons and audio channels work as expected. 

The option "dynamic normalizer" must be disabled as well, or the problem will resume. 

It's still a bizarre problem though.