Audio pops and crackles on Premiere Pro timeline - Exports are fine

Just wanted to chime in here.  I was experiencing crackling audio on a pretty beefy MacStudio with 32gb RAM and a 2TB SSD.  I tried moving the media cache to an external SSD.  Didn't work.  Cleaned/cleared cache in Premiere, AE, and Audition.  Didn't work.  Tried turning off graphics layers and MOGRTs in sequence.  Nothing.  Exported video and audio in various formats:  MP4, QT, WAV, MP3.  Turned up the buffer as suggested in here--both in Premiere and Audition.  Nada.  Finally, on a fluke, I tried to export in native sequence format as an MPEG--and I saw a difference in the audio.  Less crackling.  Then it hit me--I bet my sequence settings (another editor had set them up) were different than the export.  Sure enough, the sequence was set for 44.1k audio, and I was exporting at 48k.

Bottom line, I think, is this:  always make sure your sequences are corresponding with your output.

I have been struggling with intermittent crackling audio on a Mac M1 with an AJA Io 4k Plus... I tried all of the other suggested solutions and none worked.  I just solved it by realizing that the Preferences>Playback>Primary Audio Device was still set to Adobe Desktop Audio -- changing to AJA Io4kPLUS seems to have resolved the clicking.  I had made the changes in Audio Hardware but I think Playback defaulted back to desktop audio when I deleted my prefs.  I'm posting in case it may help someone else in the same boat!

Replying because this support came up while I needed an answer for my 16" 2019 MacBook Pro. Crackles and pops like the speaker's broken only when using Premiere, everything else sounds fine. 

I FIXED IT by going to Preferences > Audio Hardware > increasing the I/O buffer size to 2048 -- did not matter if it matched Audition's I/O Buffer Size.

Hope this helps someone.