Unless you have uncovered a bug the only thing I can think that would cause such distortion and audio related crashes are stacked samples or effects.
Make sure no sound is being re-triggered repeatedly without stopping it first.
especially for longer samples, especially if mistakenly being triggered every tick, will cause sample stacking, amplifying and distorting the sound and can also kill some audio processors.
Also check effects use.
In a similar way it is easy to make the mistake of adding the same effect again and again to a sound rather than changing the effect.
This stacks the effect causing the same issues as stacked samples.
edit - if you solved the crashing by reducing file sizes then maybe check your samples in an audio editor, maybe those pops and clicks are actually in the files. also if the samples are heavily compressed and maximized then probably not a good idea to play at 0 db as this can cause clipping in some audio hardware giving pops and clicks.