Audio corrupt when played back

I’m on 8.0.40.

I haven’t used audio for quite a while.
Now I’m trying to import some files from the pool onto an audio track.
1 out of 3/4 audio loop are corrupted after being dragged into the arrange window.
They play fine in the pool window, so the files are obviously not corrupted to start with.

I have had a bit more luck just importing an audio file but you can only import 1 at a time so it’s rather time consuming if you want to import 30. And I swear, some of these are corrupted upon opening the project again.

I thought the issue was that the files were 24 bit and project 16 bit, but converting them prior to importing made no difference.

By corrupted I mean - they are with silent or pretty much constant glitches.

I’ve tried changing the buffer size on my audio device (UR12) but that doesn’t make any difference.

I’m surprised that upon searching I only found 1 other guy who had similar issue and that wasn’t resolved.

Sometimes dragging the files from the pool actually crashes Cubase, which happens quite rarely for me.

Any ideas?