Earpiece volume very quiet

My earpiece speaker seems to have gone very quiet over past few days. Thought I was going dead!

anyway googled such phenomena and have tried all that was suggested:

cleaning speaker and mic apertures to make sure no blockages as this could affect the noise cancelling feature

checking all settings

resetting all settings... to no avail

just gone rather quiet. Tried on another iPhone e to make sure and the one I used was positively deafening compared to mine.

obviously the speaker works as I can hear it, just quiet.

any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you