The ring-scoped media override forced STREAM_MUSIC to the hardware maximum, so the alarm's configured percentage was applied on top of a maxed speaker: "50%" meant 50% of the phone's absolute maximum and the fade rode against that ceiling, far louder than the device- relative level users were used to. On-device logcat also showed the just_audio player emitting one buffer at volume 1.0 before the 5% pre-start took effect, a full-scale click on the maxed stream. The stream is now capped at the alarm's configured volume (still independent of the device's own level, so it rings at device-volume 0), and the player ramps from ~5% up to its full range under that cap. Perceived peak is the configured fraction of the device maximum, reached gradually; the opening click drops to the configured fraction instead of full scale.