Playhead lagging in Audition, no effects, no memory / RAM issues (Mac Monterey)

Hi there

Apologies if my post is similar to others in the past. I've been using Audition for a year and it's worked very well. I'm a voiceover artist, usually the maximum I use is 2 tracks in a multitrack session. 

Recently my sessions have been plagued by the playhead lagging behind the audio, making it difficult to edit efficiently and costing me time in the process. Audition normally loads fine but within the first few minutes after recording the lagging begins. 

Typically my effects rack is EQ, De-Click, De-Mouth, De-Ess, Auto Gate, Compression and a Limiter (The Wall). These have never caused an issue before. Recently I installed a plugin called Supertone Clear which uses machine-learning to seperate room sound from the voice. I imagine this is quite taxing. However, I have tried several scenarios, restarting Audition and the Macbook in turn and removing Supertone Clear from my effects rack and the issue remains.

Can anyone help? 

🙂

Thanks
George