Stuttering / Choppy playback / Exports? Try unplugging your headset

Hi

For a day now, I have had a very annoying issue with Premiere Pro CC.

Long story short: It suddenly startet stuttering / becoming choppy both in playback and in my exported media files. Also in projects, that had previously worked perfectly. So we knew it couldn't be the original files.
I did everything to fix it. I updated all my drivers, uninstalled and installed updates, uninstalled and installed each and every Adobe product, ect.

Nothing worked.

Not until my IT colleague casually mentioned, that one of his friends once had to update a driver for a microphone, before his game (which didn't use the microphone) would work.
We both looked at my USB headset (sennheiser D 10 BS) , which I had plugged in. We exchanged disbelieving looks.

I unplugged it. And everything went back to normal.

I used a whole day trying to fix the issue - it sucked!
It had nothing to do with my Premiere Pro - and I have no idea how it fixed the issue. It just did.

I only write this post to help people finding themselves in a simular situation, as I spend nearly 2 hours reading through posts on this forum, where people had been (correctly) helped, yet it didn't do anything to fix my problem (as it wasn't an issue with the adobe product)

Btw, I use a Lenovo T470 - just in case you were wondering.