Does the NUC’s network card use a chipset that’s known to work well with waves? If you have a USB network “card” laying around, it might be worth trying that to see if the behavior changes.
I haven’t heard of that sort of thing making a difference recently, but in the past it’s sometimes mattered.
If you are using Intel® UHD graphic adapters, please follow the instructions in this article to make sure you have the correct driver version installed.
Being that you are using a NUC that probably applies to you.
We have had issues sometimes on start up where SoundGrid will change the default network adapter and we are sitting there for 5 minutes wondering why we don’t have sound, but we have not experienced drop outs yet.