Audio pops & clicks & dropouts using MOTU & CoreAudio through Catalina/MacPro

I am running the new Mac Pro (10.15.3) with Logic Pro X & running sound out via a MOTU828mk3 w/latest Catalina-compatible drivers.

When playing back audio through Logic or through a browser (Pandora, YouTube) or through Music/iTunes, I get pops and clicks and audio dropouts constantly. There was no refresh or update that happened to trigger this. Unfortunately it seems to be a problem inherent to Catalina. I saw similar reports and YouTube videos of people experiencing this in the fall with Catalina on their laptops: this is the identical problem but only with sound coming out via a 3rd-party device/core audio. (sound plays back fine through the Mac Pro's internal speakers).

I ran through the test user and safe mode options and tons of troubleshooting with an audio-savvy support person yesterday, including him capturing data from my machine while the pops occurred. While I await a report back from Engineering on whether or not they found the problem, I'd love to know if anyone else here has encountered this problem & if you found a fix?

Kirby