Welcome,
This is a known issue, and unfortunately a bug with the PlayAndRecord audio session that OpenEars has to use in order to do low-latency recording. If you search these forums for the keyword PlayAndRecord you’ll see more discussion about it. I’m continuing to look into workarounds and in the meantime one option is to use AVAudioPlayer to play back sounds or audio if possible without experiencing the volume drop.
my volume on the background sound was already set to 1, unless 1 doesn’t really equal 1 in OpenEars/Pocketsphinx
This doesn’t refer to the volume of the system audio or audio objects you own.