Thanks for the project files. I don't have PD16 any longer, but I can open the project and things play successfully over here in PD18. There's a weird bug though, if I have the project's
Audio channels: set to 5.10 Surround because it makes the woman's vocals play veeeerrrrryyyy slowly and she sounds like a man with a very deep bass voice.
By chance is that what you have on your end, or is it set to Stereo?
Try changing it and see if that affects the problem in any way, for better or worse.
If not, and since the problem is clearly only on the preview side, and since even your older projects seem to be affected by this issue, I think we need to know more about your computer. Can you please follow the steps
here and run the DxDiag test and attach the results?