I have a MacBook M1 Max that has been nothing but a pain in the ass when it comes to the core audio. Anytime I attempt to use soft synths that peg the CPU at about 40 to 50%, the speakers will start to occasionally crackle/pop completely disrupting my flow.

Apparently it's not a completely unheard of problem no pun intended. I've had to go back to my windows machine (bitwig and FL) + MOTU, and pretty much abandoned Mac music with logic pro completely. Really ticks me off.