Premiere timeline is synced, but exported video is visibly out of sync on my phone — I was monitoring through Bluetooth

I’m losing my mind over a 22-second video and could really use someone who understands Premiere/audio sync better than I do.

I made a vertical music/comedy video where I built a beat out of everyday kitchen sounds — cabinet door, BBQ tongs, seasoning shaker, hand slap on the counter — and then played a bass line over it.

Everything was manually synced in Premiere and looked/sounded right while I was editing.

Here’s where I think I screwed myself:

I was monitoring the audio through a Bluetooth speaker the entire time.

When I export the video and play it on my phone with Bluetooth OFF, the audio hits before the visual. It’s very noticeable on the cabinet, tongs, shaker, etc.

I eventually moved all of the audio about 4 frames later, and that got it much closer, which makes me think I may have unknowingly synced the whole video against Bluetooth latency while editing.

But now I’m still fighting little sync differences — especially the tongs — and I honestly can’t tell anymore whether I’m fixing it or making it worse.

Project details:

• Premiere Pro
• 1080x1920 vertical
• 30 fps
• H.264 export
• AAC 48 kHz
• Separate kitchen percussion and bass recordings
• Some bass audio came from a phone recording, with a short GoPro section at the end
• Final video is only about 22 seconds

Things I’ve already tried:

• Hardware encoding
• Software encoding
• 48 kHz audio
• Flattening the entire audio mix to one WAV
• Exporting a ProRes master
• Re-exporting the ProRes master to H.264
• Moving the entire audio mix globally by a few frames
• Checking the export on my phone with Bluetooth completely off

The ProRes master played inside Premiere looks synced, but once I’m judging the final H.264 on my phone, I’m still seeing problems.

I also have a separate mix issue: the kitchen percussion is still way too aggressive on a phone speaker even after lowering it around -9 dB, while the bass either disappears or becomes too dominant depending on where I set it.

At this point I’ve spent about 12 hours on a 22-second video and I’m officially too close to it to trust my own eyes or ears anymore 😂

My main questions:

1. If I edited while monitoring through Bluetooth, is it likely I accidentally built Bluetooth latency into the entire edit?

2. Is there a better way to objectively measure/correct the A/V offset instead of eyeballing it frame-by-frame?

3. What’s the best way to balance sharp kitchen percussion against bass so it translates reasonably well to phone speakers?

I’m happy to post a short export/timeline screenshot if that helps. I mainly want to understand what I did wrong so I don’t repeat this on the next one.