Voice Memo Recordings: Suddenly Fraught With Inexplicable Distortion/Volume/Noise. Previously: Excellent; never a problem.

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Top, Voice Memo recording today. Useless, very difficult to process into a useful state.

Below: all previous voice memo recordings look like this and are clear, and fine.

Iphone Model 13 pro max

OS: Current iOs

The new recordings are grainy, too loud, noisy and I have to process them a lot to use them, and are still extremely inferior to the previous recordings.

So, starting about Nov 12th or somewhere around there, (probably applied an update around that time) Voice Memos started recording terribly. Same microphone, same setup. The included image gives an idea of the problem, which occurs whether I set it for Mono or Stereo, and whether I choose Lossy or Lossless. Have tried everything I can think of, port cleaning, new mic, etc. No effect. Even installed a different recorder (MOTIV) ... same problem.

I have used VM for years, and use it daily to record my YouTube presentations. I have to solve this problem.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Any assistance or suggestions appreciated.

Really need some insight on this. Voice memos is crucial to my daily workflow.