OK, this is going to be something about the app, so start from a clean version with the sample app or a tutorial example and compare the working version to the version in which it doesn’t work.
You can turn on verbosePocketsphinx and OpenEarsLogging for assistance doing this troubleshooting for yourself, since when both of them are turned on they show any errors or warnings. You can search your own log output for the words “error” and/or “warning” in order to use the logging output for troubleshooting. Good luck!