How does HomePod Mini's "noise reduction" feature work? Causing muffled sound when near running water.

I try to use the HomePod Mini to listen to music in the bathroom.

The sound quality is amazing when there is no water running, but as soon as I turn on the shower or faucet, the HomePod's sound output becomes a muddled mess.

With much experimentation, it seems clear that the Homepod is doing this "on purpose" when the microphones detect the sound. If I start a track before turning on water, the sound quality and volume noticeably drop when the water turns on. and that reduction seems to be very similar to the way that it responds when you issue a hay S command to it, as though it is reducing the music to avoid "talking over you."

The result of this is that the HomePod is not very good at playing music in a room with running water such as a shower, which is annoying because that's one of my top use cases for listening to music in my house.

I have spoken to Applecare about this several times and really gotten nowhere. There's not appear to be any documentation on the consumer side that explains how this feature is supposed to work and specifically, how to temporarily disable it.

it's at the point where despite having the HomePod, I find myself wanting to bring a Bluetooth speaker into the bathroom so that I can actually listen to music without the device "courteously" muting the vocals and treble.