VALORANT freezes/glitches even in main menu, audio stutters too — other games fine

I’m having a weird VALORANT issue where every few seconds the game freezes/glitches for about 0.5–1 second.

At first I thought it only happened in matches, but now I confirmed it also happens while I’m just sitting in the main menu.

The important part: if I play music in the background while VALORANT is open, the music glitches/stutters at the exact same time as the game. As soon as I completely close VALORANT, the music goes back to normal.

Other games like CS2 run perfectly.

My specs:

RTX 5070 Ti

1440p 360 Hz monitor

I already tried:

Ethernet/Wi-Fi

Phone hotspot

IPv6/DNS/Teredo/network resets

Clean boot

Different VALORANT graphics settings/FPS caps

NVIDIA driver reinstall

Full DDU + fresh NVIDIA driver install

Nothing fixed it.

Has anyone seen VALORANT cause this kind of system/audio stutter even in the main menu? Could this be Vanguard, audio/USB drivers, chipset, or DPC latency related?