How can I preview with audio in After Effects and be able to pause / resume the preview? I am working on a series of animations which have elements that are timed to the beat of the background track in AE. It's crucial that they are lined up perfectly to the audio (they are DJ training videos).

I'm used to Premiere, but am pretty new to After Effects. In Premiere you can preview the audio by pressing space, and then press space again to stop the preview. In After Effects, when you do this there is no audio.

The only way I've been able to get a preview with audio is to use the RAM preview, but when I press space to stop it, it goes back to the beginning of the timeline / render area. 

I need to be able to listen to the audio, and then stop it on a beat so the timeline marker is in the right place for an effect / keyframe. Is there any way I can do this?
To enable the audio playback, only way is to use the RAM-Preview. Press Numpad 0 or the associated |||> in the Preview Panel to start the preview rendering process:




Press Numpad 0 again to stop it
Press Numpad 0 twice to stop and playback the previously rendered (green) frames


In terms of correct audio playback:


Set the Frame Rate to the composition settings
Enable From Current Time option
Enable Sound Preview (6th button in the first row)


In order to facilitate the work:


Set the rendering resolution of the view to a lower value for e.g. to half or quarter
Limit the work area in your timeline, press B to set the start render point (Begin), press N to set the end point (End) 
Enable Loop preview (7th button) to repeat the preview of the current work area 


Note: As @Emir Dupovac mentioned, also check your waveform:



See this related answer: AE - Composition video file/layer missing audio