Premiere stops playing after leaving window and returning

This is really strange, I can open Premiere and it can play perfectly fine UNTIL I view my desktop or open a folder or check browser, the moment I return to the Premiere window, playback stops working, I can press Space and nothing happens. I tried a pref reset multiple times, cleared cache, picked diff cache drive, uninstalled Premiere entirely.

It happens again and again, the moment I leave focus on Premiere to absolutely anything else and return, it stops working. 

This is a maxed out RAM Mac Studio, fully capable.

Went to a previous version of Premiere, same problem. I don't know what to do, I need it working for major deadlines approaching and can't work like this. It never had issues before, everything from thumbnails to playback was instant, now it just sits there.