Logic is constantly stuttering.... WHY?

I work usually with quite big sessions, mostly in composition and sound design work for visual media. I'm not sure why is this happening but as I continue working even in production stage without any mastering plugins engaged, I'm getting constant stuttering upon pressing space to stop/play the session which begins like this:

1. Playhead starts blinking for a bit, then jumping through the timeline going forward, followed by beachball - I need to press space multiple times so it stops running. I'm not getting system overload messages, the session keeps on running while it stutters and won't stop til I press space.

2. Then I notice CPU spikes - either the first, last or full spikes when the whole session gets LAGGED. Something is causing these random spikes and I can't figure it out what it could be. I mostly use Pro Q3, some IK Multimedia plugins, mostly third party FX via sends and stock stuff. I tried disabling the plugins but spike status didn't change.

3. I have to wait sometimes 2-4 mins for Logic to chill so I can press play and hope the playhead is not stuttering again. Demolishing to my workflow and working fast.

The workaround that I have found to prevent this stuttering is selecting a cycle area and constantly looping it without making it stop until I'm happy with my moves. This is very frustrating and tiring since I have to listen to the same small chunks for 5-10mins repeatedly or even more sometimes and I've got no control over this. If I press space to stop out of habit, the playhead starts to stutter and and the whole crash story begins again...

I have noticed that my session is running at 48kHz but the interface defaults to 44.1kHz even if I change it to 48kHz - could this be the reason for the conflict within Logic?

I have noticed that for particularly big sessions this happens more often than smaller ones. My current session is about 200 audio tracks - all MIDI that has been used was bounced.

My machine is MBP M1 2021, 64GB RAM, Running Sonoma 14.5 with Logic 11.0.1 at the moment. Minimum or 256 buffer for producing and maximum buffer for mixing/mastering. I'm using Audient ID14 interface. Surely with the equipment I've got this should be handled with breeze. Has anyone faced this problem?

Here are my settings for the mixing/mastering session:

Previously I've had the same problem but with system overload message when my input and output was Audient ID14 and then I've changed to System Setting which worked for a while until it didn't....

I also messed with changing buffer size, processing threads and multithread, re-enabled core audio but nothing works for it to be sustainable. I'm out of ideas...... Help!