Long loading times + other weird things

Hello! Here are my hardware specs:
- MacBook Air 2020 - M1 - 8gb ram

I'm using musescore 3.6.2.

1. Recently, something happened that caused musescore's loading times to go from 15 sec to upwards of 10 minutes sometimes. The app says that it's "not responding", but eventually it loads up. I don't know what could've caused this, but it's quite annoying and confusing. I only have MDL and Musescore general HQ downloaded, no plug ins. Again, this only started happening recently. Redownloading the application has not been helpful.

2. The second weird thing is a playback glitch. Sometimes playback will be fine, but other times there's a static-y/crunchy/distorted sound that happens (which is quite unpleasant to listen to). The audio slows and lags a little bit, then it returns to normal.
   I feel like this may happen from messing with mixer/synthesizer settings, but I haven't had that problem in the past.

It feels like these two bugs started happening at the same time. Plus, I tried to open musescore when I started this post. It has been hanging on "Loading soundfonts" for the last 5-7 minutes or so.

Any insight would be appreciated!