my audio sounds like a campfire. driver, hardware, or dpc latency??

fresh PC build, fresh Windows install, and still:

USB Audio Device Properties
Device status:
This device cannot start. (Code 10)

{Operation Failed}
The requested operation was unsuccessful.

plus crackling in the USB DAC duirng music playback... everything else about the PC is fast and smooth... it makes music unbearable and i realy want to fix it properly instead of guessing. id appreciate a proper explanation of what to check, in what order, id like to learn this rather than just copy random fixes from comment sections.