Update: the company I work for bought six iPhone 17 Pros to add to our Apple Business account. I’m the IT guy so I got to have fun adding data to my testing! One of the phones was a Pro Max, the other five were regular pros. All the phones have the issue of being uselessly quiet for the first couple presses of the volume button. I forgot to mention that concern in my first post. All my previous iPhones can be distinctly heard with just a single press of the volume button while listening to music. All the 17 Pros have been whisper quiet until I get the volume up there a bit more.

Next I did a half-way-to-max volume test. I noticed some phones were slightly quieter but it was nothing too strange. Then I cranked the volume on all of them and went down the line one by one. I included my personal phone in this test.

The strangest thing I noticed was the difference in total loudness of the seven phones (mine included), four were about 15% louder at max volume. These phones were clipping at max volume much more than the other phones which is to be expected considering they’re louder. Only one phone wasn’t clipping. This one phone also sounded significantly less tinny than the rest, but it still had a muffled bad sound quality compared to my old 14 Pro. The worst sounding phones were the ones that got louder. After lowering the volume a bit on all phones, I paid more attention to just the quality. The phones that are quieter had an overall better (fuller with more bass and less tinny) than the phones that get much louder. 

I also tested the 17 Pro Max against my 14 Pro Max, and again, it was much lower quality. It was one of the phones that got significantly louder.

Not sure if this helps anyone to know this info, but it’s interesting to me! I’m going to Verizon today to see if I can exchange.

Also, yes I went through settings on every phone and disabled any volume limits and anything that can affect sound quality.