Help: Bluetooth speaker cutting of first few words

I've discovered a weird issue recently, trying to listen to audiobooks from my phone on any of a variety of portable, battery powered, waterproof Bluetooth speakers (shower speakers...).

On several speaker, from dollar-store specials to moderately expensive Altec Lansings and others, and using several playback programs from (e.g. Audible, Listen) I get the same problem:

This first few words spoken after any silence longer than a fraction of a second get lost. It's as if the amplifier goes to sleep for power-savings after half a second with no audio, and then takes half a second or so kick in again.
In fact, I suspect that is exactly what's happening.

I have no issue playing the same content via Bluetooth on my Echo devices or my stereo system (all of which are mains-powered and therefore, as I suspect, power-saving is not as aggressive), nor does it happen on any of my Bluetooth headphones, which have batteries, but perhaps because they don't need to drive a large speaker, also don't use the same sort of aggressive power savings?

Any one seeing similar issues? Any thoughts or solutions?

:help:, :thanks:

ApK