Regarding the second point: I believe this is "sound check" a setting that normalizes audio volume between different songs. I think it takes a second to kick in

Regarding the second point: I believe this is "sound check" a setting that normalizes audio volume between different songs. I think it takes a second to kick in (maybe it has to fill up some audio buffer to work?) and yes it's incredibly annoying. Afaik only solution is to disable sound check