Poor audio quality after one second of playback on Nokia 1.4

I've found a gateway to a possible solution: I've now installed VLC Media Player, which allowed me to change the audio output from **AudioTrack** to **OpenSL ES** (which I presume are some kind of codecs or audio libraries). With OpenSL ES the issue is now solved. Now the question becomes: Is it possible to select OpenSL ES system-wide as the audio output system? Or is OpenSL ES perhaps only available in VLC, because they've embedded it in their app? ---- Original problem: I recently bought a Nokia 1.4 32 GB phone, with Android Go (which I updated to version 11). Today I wanted to listen to music for the first time. I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack, but the audio coming from the headphone jack is just terrible: As I start to play a song, for the first second the audio sounds rich and full as it's supposed to sound, but immediately after that the sound loses its richness and continues to sound flat, flaky and tinny. It's almost as if some kind of automatic volume limiting is applied, but done in a very poor fashion. Now, I have no expertise in audio, but my intuition leads me to believe that this more likely points to a software rather than a hardware issue. Or am I mistaken here? Could hardware audio components (maybe a hardware codec?) cause such issues as well? I've tried three different music players (YouTube Music, Pulsar and Musicolet), each with and without turning on an equalizer, but the same thing happens every time. I've also tried to disable MusicFX, but that doesn't appear to do anything. My headphones are cheap Sony earbuds, but I have no issues with the audio coming from my previous Android phone (LG 3G S), nor from my PC or laptop. I don't have a Bluetooth or other type of headphone, so I am unable to make a comparison. What could be the cause of this issue and is there anything I can try to mitigate this issue? Perhaps install another or update existing software audio codec? Or am I hard-pressed to solve such an issue with an Android phone (of this caliber)?