Audio glitch occurs on every new cut of audio for about 1 second, then returns to normal

I am having a problem with my audio. Whenever I make changes to an audio track (denoising, desser, etc.), it sounds weird at the beginning of each clip of audio. The glitch makes the voices (editing a talkshow) sound muddled and there's almost this static type noise. After about a second, the audio goes back to normal. When I export, the audio glitch is built into the export. What has been a temporary fix is to play the glitchy audio back a second time. For some reason, the audio glitch only happens on the first playback of the clip. So in order to export a non-glitchy export, I have to playback the entire video before exporting.

Details:

Adobe Premiere 25.1.0

MacBook Pro 2021, 16 inch

Apple M1 Max chip

32GB Ram

MacOs Sequioa 15.1.1

1TB Hard Drive

Editing off of Seagate External Hard Drives into USB-C port.

Video Source:

Type: QuickTime Movie

Image Size: 1920 x 1080

Frame Rate: 24.00

Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 24-bit - Stereo

Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo

Sequence Settings:

Image Size: 1920 x 1080

Frame Rate: 29.97 (yes, this is different from source, but it happens in 24fps sequence as well)

It's a 3 camera multi-cam edit with at least 2 tracks of audio per episode, sometimes more.

Steps to Reproduce Problem:

-Make an audio cut 

-Select the audio clip and use the Essential Sound panel

-Change the amount of Noise Reduction

-Play back the audio clip

What should happen:

The audio should be adjusted without any issues

What does happen:

The audio, the first time you play it back, sounds muddled and sort of static like for about 1 second.

I'm attaching 2 15 second clips. This first has the problem (no playback ahead of time). The 2nd is normal (played it back ahead of time). 

Please forgive the color/blur, this is raw footage I didn't shoot. 🙂

Thank you!