Why is my audio so choppy?

[PinkDemon]

I've had a Asus Zenfone Max Plus M1 for a couple years now, and for the past year-ish I've been having audio issues in various apps. The audio will get stuttery, or I'll have weird distortions. It seems to clear up for a few seconds if I run the memory cleaner, but nothing really stops it for long, and closing all apps does nothing. It has so far affected audible and my podcasting app, podcast addict, and recently started to affect Libro.fm (after they rolled out their latest update). Strangely, my music playing app (just entitled Music Player) is mostly unaffected. Doing a factory reset did not fix it, and it seems to act the same regardless of how full my hard drive is, or how much I have on my SD card.

Is there any fix for this? It's quite annoying not being able to listen to audiobooks and podcasts how I want to, when I want to.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Does it also happen in Safe Mode? https://www.hardreset.info/devices/asus/asus-zenfone-max-m1-s425/safe-mode/. You'll only be able to test preinstalled apps this way, but it can give you an idea if the problem is due to something you installed vs a problem with the system.