Getting A cracking

I am using Audacity 2.3.0
MAC OS 10.10.5

Everything is working in terms of the software performance besides the playback.

I have some terrible crackle in/ artifacts in the WAV files. I have ran through almost every setting. Including the latency settings. I think I messed up and kept the device at Core Audio when recording.

The audio files look clean so I am weirded out why they sound so bad with the crackle.

I hope this may help. I used a Behringer UMC 404hd, I do not have hooked in at the moment. Do you think if I go get the hardware I may be able to fix this or does this seem like I am doomed because I selected Core Audio instead of MME device when recording.
Everything sounded beautiful during the recording.
I hope this is familiar to someone on here.
Thank you so much.
Screen Shot 2019-03-22 at 12.07.42 PM.png

It’s normal for Audacity to use CoreAudio on macOS. Macs don’t have “MME”.

If you think you messed up your settings, Audacity can be set back to “factory defaults”. See: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/resetting-audacity/50613/1

I am having the exact same issue. Were you able to find a way to correct it?

Not exactly the same. You have a different version of mac OS X, and probably a different version of Audacity. Please start a new topic and describe clearly, and in detail, what problem you are having, and include details of which version of macOS, and which version of Audacity.