Any Audio Edit Causes Major Timeline Lag and Stuttering

PROBLEM:

I just made the upgrade to Premiere 25.1, along with some coworkers of mine, as a solution to a separate issue we 'd been experiencing with 23/24 (which upgrading did resolve). That said, we work with .mp4 video (H264 Codec, never had an issue with using this codec in the past, ever.), .MOV animation files (which don't seem to be a part of my issue), and .WAV audio/music files.

NOW I am experiencing a new, much much more inconvenient issue.

Whenever I touch an audio file in the project (whether that be moving them, cutting them, removing them, shifting them, adjusting volume, ANYTHING), the timeline freezes. This has happened with every file type from Model 12 microphone audio (.WAV) that has been treated in adobe audition This has happened with every music file I've imported. This has happened with every audio file regardless of the source SSD drive. Doing any of these processes with video and image files don't have this effect on the timeline at all, nor does this issue cause any playback lag. It simply slows my process by roughly a second for every single cut I make, thus increasing the edit time on projects.

SYSTEM SPECS:

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core Processor 3.49 GHz

64GB RAM

FOOTAGE FILMED ON:

Sony a6400 (Exports as H.264 Codec [I know])

AUDIO RECORDED ON:
TASCAM Model 12 Mixer

Troubleshooting I've tried so far:

Deleting the media cache (have done both options multiple times, partial and full delete).

Updating ALL drivers, graphics, audio, regular system updates, etc..

Resetting the window layout back to default.

Allocated 52gb of RAM to Premiere when open (out of my 64 total).

Looked at Task Manager and noted nothing out of the ordinary when triggering these lag spikes.

Turned automatic waveform generation off (actually made things significantly worse, had to clear cache and reset again with it back on).

Ensured all footage is 23.96fps, ensured the FPS of the sequences I'm using is the same.

Ensured the audio files AND Premiere are set to 48000hz. Using only .WAV files.

Made sure that I'm editing in Quicktime Apple ProRes422 HQ (and tried LT).

Forcing the color management to Rec.709 (unnecessary but tried it anyways cause I'm desperate).

When in MME, ensured that the input was set to OFF. Taking this train of thought a step further, I ended up switching the audio driver to ASIO and running directly through my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.

Made sure GPU acceleration is ON. My PC should be more than capable to handle this, as it has in the past.

Tested turning off Composite During Edit function in the timeline.

Tested turning off Show FX Badges in the timeline.

Importing and editing as a Production instead of a Project.

Ensured there are NO third-party plug-ins active or even installed for that matter.

I'm really at a loss here. I've been using Adobe products for personal work projects, and run a team of editors on this software but I'm at my wits end with this issue that of the 4 members of my team is only seemingly affecting 2 of our machines (note: 2 editors on my team have the EXACT same machine, EXACT same specs. One of them is having this issue, the other is not). I'm pretty adept with these sorts of things and have tried every solution I could find online or think of myself.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.