unknown pops and clicks in recording

I have been recording a few songs over the past few months and I haven’t had any issues until today, I go to record a guitar part and the noise in the background has increased significantly…there are these digital sounding pops and clicks that are occurring without me even making a sound, and the strange part is that I can actually hear them very faintly through my speakers when they are turned up enough and my face is right next to them (without any other sounds playing or recording, just them sitting there) (the speakers do seem to be working fine otherwise, when I am not in audacity the pops don’t occur). I have been through a few other forums and tried to do a bit of tweaking but no luck on making it go away. My set up goes like this: usb/printer cable from laptop into presonus audiobox; from the back of the audiobox I have it plugged into my presonus eris 3.5 speakers with 2 small patch cables (L and R); and from the front of the audiobox I have a mic cable connected to the mic…from my fumbling around a bit it seems like it is definitely not the mic cable or the patch cables, but I still can’t figure it out. I messed with the buffer settings with no luck, tried to record it without the speakers connected to the audiobox with no luck, tried deleting and reinstalling audacity with no luck…I attached a few audio files so you can hear what it sounds like. any ideas??



Sorry I can’t help out - but I’m sympathetic - I’m also suffering from clicking noises

[Moderator note: Similar issue here: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/infuriating-clicks/64022/1]