Thank goodness that someone else has found this too! I have had the same issue for 2 months nowsince September just like the poster. I use the same thunderbolt approach with a Presonus Quantum 2626 as well. I've used this setup for almost 3 years now and have played a TON of apex and never once had an issue until recently. And same as poster above, I get the same audio crash 1 minute into a game every freaking time. Its so disappointing. I enjoy this game, but I literally cannot play it at all right now. I keep hoping that an update will post that will fix the issue, but I guess I'm doomed to never playing Apex again.
To echo what others say as well - this is the ONLY game i have this problem with. Very annoying. I've wiped my PC and fresh installed EVERYTHING, tried every driver update under the sun and nothing works.
PC Specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900K (3.20 GHz)
128 GB (128 GB usable) RAM
Win 11
RTX 4090