Seems this issue has been raised a few times but I can't get my head around one thing... I just bought a usb 96, opened up an empty project in ableton live, imported an 8 bar drum loop and hear this "clipping" noise that many users have reported already. Played around with bit rate/sample block settings as suggested but this didn't resolve anything. CPU is never going above 15 percent at any point.

What is confusing me most is that even if I open iTunes and play a bunch of songs, some of them cause the dreaded clipping noise but other don't! Even if I play two, sonically similar high quality mp3/wav files, one will crackle and the other sounds just fine. How can this be happening with one audio file but not the other?

It's worth noting that I'm running a new MacBook Pro M1 and as a result I'm running the usb 2.0 cable from the 96 in through a usb-c adapter. Initially I thought this could have something to do with the issue but that doesn't explain the above, whereby only some audio playback is causing the clipping noise but other files play just fine. Really don't want to send the 96 back but I may have to if I can't resolve this. Any suggestions would be appreciated!