POE 2 - Crashes when loading, possibly if another App is using sound (Spotify, YouTube)

This relates to POE 2, please link me the POE2 support forum if this is not the correct place.

The game seems to crash when loading between zones, most notably with portals to and from town. I haven't noticed it when playing just the game, but if I have music playing or a youtube video on another screen etc its much more likely (not every time but every portal feels like a coinflip)

What will happen is the loading screen will be ticking away and then sound on my PC will begin to loop and everything will freeze.

I then have to hard reset my PC, it becomes completely unresponsive.

I have unfortunately now wasted many waystones and lost trade opportunities with this issue and quite frankly it makes the game feel unplayable in its current state for me as this game is all about listening to other things while grinding.

I play through Steam and have verified game integrity to no effect.

Performance settings match NVIDIA recommended settings including Fullscreen mode.

PC Specs:

CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce RTZ 3070 Ti
RAM - 32GB DDR4 at 3600mhz
SSD storage with plenty of space

I have experienced two crashes, in two hours. Both while loading in to a new zone (no portal).
I was on discord at the same time, thats all.
The entire PC froze, required hard reset.

CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11700KF @ 3.60GHz 3.50 GHz
Windows 11 24H2, OS build26100.2605
RAM - 32,0 GB
M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4, 1TB, read 7 450 MB/s / write 6 900 MB/s

I also have the feeling that watching youtube is kinda involved...