Similar thing happened with my airpods too. To compensate for the obviously diminished volume I was cranking the volume up. And even with that podcasts were barely audible when in anything but absolute silence. To add insult to injury the os was constantly “warning” me that I was “damaging” my hearing by listening things too loud. Of course in reality no such thing was happening.

After that terrible experience i couldn’t justify the expense of buying an other apple airpod.