I’ve had to remedy microphone crackle and distortion twice on two different builds/rebuilds of Windows 10 PCs, and somehow forgot from the last time how to remedy.

In my case, the problem was the onboard sound for the ASUS Motherboard (ASUS ROG Strix B550-E and ASUS ROG Strix B550-A motherboards.) The solution is to get the audio drivers for the Realtek Audio that come on the board and install them (B550-A and B550-E downloads.)