Audio playing back at 1000Xs speed in After Effects preview...

I didn't report this as a bug, because I don't know if it is. It might just be my local AE or file, but after the recent AE 2024 update on Dec 5, I'm having the weirdest issue I've ever experienced in AE.

I have an AE file with Illustrator vector art, and audio tracks. I'm animating characters using Limber and VO wuith mouth animation from Adobe Character Animator. As of today, when I hit preview to hear the audio to know what I'm animating to, the audio plays back at about 1000Xs speed. The VO track is 1:10, and it plays back in about a quarter second, like an old tape scrubbing at high speed.

My comps and sub comps are all at the same frame rate, 23.976. vI've even imported the source audio without the Character Animator assets, and just the audio on it's own plays back at that super-high speed. It's stopped my forward motion on this project, completely. I've tried several different ways of asking the question on Google, and have found zero posts describing any issue even close to this. So, I can't tell if it's my file that's gone sideways, my install of AE that's gone sideways or if the new AE update is causing this and I'm just the first to post about it?

Anyone?