Left earbud quieter than the other

My Apple (wired) Earbuds that I bought about 2 1/2 months ago brand-new suddenly have one ear being significantly quieter than the other. I have tried panning the audio output of my phone to the left, but all this does is make the right ear quieter -- there is no difference in the left ear at all. I have also tried cleaning them, to no avail. This super annoying, especially since these are the only Lightning-compatible earbuds I have. It isn't an earwax problem since I cleaned them because of this issue and there was no change. I'm using an iPhone X with iOS 16.7.2.