Audio sometimes wont play

I am completely boggled by this issue.

I started a project and the audio was working fine for about a day. Then suddenly the audio track stopped playing. I did not change any of my audio settings.

(yes, i am using RAM preview to play audio.)

I copy/pasted all of my attributes into a new composition with the same specs and the audio worked. I thought maybe it was a weird glitch so I continued working in the new compostion. Then after making a couple changes to my project (created a null, made one camera adjustment) the audio stopped playing again. At the time this issue started it was a pretty new project with not much going on so it's not a memory issue. I can precomp the same audio track and it will play fine inside the precomp but not play in my main comp. Anytime I create a new composition and paste ALL of my layers to it the audio will play but then randomly stop. So I have no audio for any random amount of time then suddenly ill have audio for 5 minutes and then it will stop playing again. Initially I thought it had to do with the camera but it doesnt consistently start and stop when I make adjustments to the camera. This is a graphics project that is driven by the voice over so I really need to hear the audio. Any suggestions?