fwiw, I haven’t been able to reproduce the problem yet either. Reaper and all versions of Wavelab start clipping for me at the same point, using 1 KHz sine, or random music, on Windows 10. Multiple interfaces.
EDIT: I don’t hear a crackling distortion sound unique to Wavelab 9.5.35 (I think I know what you’re talking about having heard crackling distortion in multiple cases in the past). All the Wavelab versions distortion sounds the same to me, none with crackling really.