Live listen with AirPods gets choppy after background sounds used then disabled

been trying to fix live listen so I can use it with my AirPods 2, but after the re-pairing tip, set the background sound on, then switched back to live listen, and problem returned. It was fine right after pairing, but putting into background sound and back to live listen resulted in it sputtering the audio again.

I have the latest and greatest iOS on an iPhone 11… any idea what is causing this? ( hoping I made described it enough to make sense. )