Microphone audio distorts upon importation into Premiere

[AverageDuck301]

Hi all!

For a few months now, I've been experiencing a frustrating issue with Premiere that I'm hoping to get resolved. In essence, the issue is that certain clips I record that contain my microphone audio become distorted, and gain odd "clicks" and "pops" only once I import the media into Premiere. These distortions cannot be found in the raw files or other editing applications (from my investigation). It's also important to note that the distortion becomes present upon importing the media (meaning I can hear it in my timeline), it's not something that the export process is creating.

To expand a bit, I produce YouTube videos, so the majority if not all of my videowork in Premiere involves microphone audio. What I've noticed is that recording my audio separately (no other visual/audio sources present, though still saved as an .mp4) has no issues within Premiere, and is not subject to the distortion. However, as soon as I try and record my audio alongside gameplay, or overtop a YouTube video or other source that I might be reacting to, this is the media that becomes problematic once imported. This has allowed me to temporarily work around the issue by recording things separately, but obviously is not an ideal long-term solution.

I have included sample clips with this post so that you all can hear the distortion. The "Raw Video" clip is the raw file, and has no distortion. The "Premiere Edited Video" is the same clip, however I simply imported it into Premiere and exported it, with no additional changes made. Within the clip you should be able to hear 2-3 of these low "pops" and "clicks." I might be easier to pick them up using headphones, not sure.

I run Premiere on Windows 11, with what I believe to be mostly stock settings across the board. The one popular suggestion/solution I found on here for similar issues was to change my "Default Input" setting, under Audio Hardware, to "No Input." I did this and unfortunately the issue persists.

Any suggestions or advice to try and resolve this would be greatly appreciated. Also, this is my first time making one of these kinds of posts, so if I'm missing any obvious information, please forgive me. That, or any additional details needed I'm happy to share. Thank you all very much!

[AverageDuck301]

Wanted to post an update, in case anyone comes across this in the future with a similar issue!

I was able to (for now) resolve the problem, by altering the saving format of my recordings prior to importing them into Premiere. Instead of having my microphone audio, and additional sound sources compiled into one track, I set it so that the file saves the two as separate tracks. For whatever reason, this has eliminated any distortion.