I had major issues and Motion 3 was the culprit. Once I uninstalled, everything worked normally again. I tried reinstalling the Motion 3 plugin, and it updated itself to the 3.3 version and the issues returned immediately. Clearly there is an issue with this plugin.

it looks like this latest build of AE (17.0.2) has finally resolved the audio preview problem, and AE seems to be running nicely once again. I've only downloaded it this morning and haven't used it for a real project yet, but so far so good. Thanks Adobe! NOW it's resolved :)

I wanted to update my comments about AE being super sluggish and slow interaction-wise. It turns out the slowness was related to the "Motion 3" plugin I'm using. Once I turned that off, the sluggishness went away and things went back to normal. The numberpad "." audio preview shortcut IS still wonky though... the play-head in the timeline is not smooth—it's jumpy during playback, which makes it very hard to tell what's what when I'm mapping out the audio with markers.

This issue is NOT resolved. The 17.0.1 build did not fix the issue. Not only is the audio preview still wonky, but the entire program is so sluggish. I have to click two or three times to make a value field live... and then I have to type the value in slowly so that the program will receive the entire value I'm typing it. If I type normally (like I used to do with previous builds), and then hit enter and move on, I find that the only one or two numbers or letters were entered in, and the value or type is incomplete and I have to go back and redo it... slowly. This build slows down my workflow immensely and adds a whole lot of frustration to my day.

After latest update playback takes FOREVER to stop... so I can then finally make edits again. Also getting Premiere program monitor blackouts like crazy. So far 2020 is garbage.

I think it's an issue of the new version of AE 2020. I have the same problem that I haven't met before. Here are my screenshots. I have Default output in prefs: Default Dynamics (Realtek...). Audio preview doesn't work on any shortcut if I turn off "Play Video in Preview" icon. So, it works only if I preview everything together. Fix Please!

Same problem here, very time-consuming. BTW @Kyle Napelbaum trick worked for me (unchecking Mute Audio When Preview is Not Realtime" in preferences).

Adobe, please, split bug report and feature request in 2 distincts forum. Fixing a bug isn't a "feature"...

Same problem here since AE CC2020. No more audio preview with the default shortcut "."
Checked eveything could be checked after researches on the Adobe site and the net..
Still working with AE CC2019. Need a fix please !

Same issue, but for me the play-head doesn't even move. Hitting decimal on numpad does nothing at all

Numpad decimal shortcut for audio preview not working in any way.
Ram preview with audio working as usual btw

Using After Effects 17.0 on WIndows 10
Audio file: wav or mp4

I just figured out the uncheck "Mute Audio When Preview is Not Realtime" Preview preference work-around... so that helps, but when playing the audio preview, the play-head in the timeline is not smooth—it's jumpy... which makes it very hard to tell what's what when I'm mapping out the audio.

I've also noticed that I have to hit the option+asterisk shortcut numerous time to bring up the "Marker Comment" dialog panel, which is really annoying and slows things up. This build of AE feels sluggish in a lot of ways.

I had this same issue. Unchecking "Mute Audio When Preview is Not Realtime" in the Preview preferences is a temporary fix that worked. One of the Adobe employees said that isn't a fix and a bug report needs to be filed.

There is an easy way to set what shortcuts do what. Go to the preview panel, select num pad "." and set your preferences.