It is really weird and I suppose not every user will be able to change his router (especially router from office) to resolve this problem. So anyway this must be fixed by Apple ASAP.

I tried your doultion and IT WORKED! I just removed WiFi network to which I was connected when popping started, from network settings and left only more modern networks and popping was GONE. I used my laptop as usual (I'm using Docker, IDE and 2 browser windows with ~10 tabs each, memory pressure ~60-70%) and no crackling at all.

The issue is not related to network at all. I can hear audio popping even during playback of local audio/video files. It 150% related to bug in coraudiod service (or in MacOS core). You can find error messages from console app in other comments and they definitely linked to problems with memory management (coreaudiod trying to put some data in memory but for some reason unable to do it when there are no free memory and system uses swap file actively).

this is 3rd party app and if you haven't installed it (or someone that used your mac) you should not bother

It will not resolve the problem persistently. It worked for me for hour or something like that. The problem is much deeper - errors in console tells that it can be related to firmware/OS core.