Playback sound choppy & slow

New user; fresh installation. Audacity 2.3.0 is functioning all right – I’m able to edit audio files, which is all I’m after. But the playback sound quality is terrible – all choppy and slow. The files themselves are fine, before & after editing, as long as I listen to them in VLC or any other player. I checked all the Audacity preferences and settings, but I can’t locate the trouble. Please help! This is Win10 64bit.

reviving this thread because I’m having the exact same problem that you’re having.

Audacity 2.3.0 is rather old. The current version is Audacity 2.4.2