The Sample Tool loads the sound into RAM and plays it from RAM. The Audio Quicklook Player reads the file from disk (streams it from disk) This has nothing to do with Dropbox. AudioFinder has two different playback engines.
ahh thats interesting... is this why you say the over view isnt accurate in quicklook.
maybe you need is a hybrid? that quick looks but at the same time pulls the sound to RAM..
my bet is most people are doing this on shorter sounds? I do have some longish recordings.. in general most of libry is 30s and under - with some 2 or 3 min ambient loops..
( I wish I had been better at programming at uni - i changed course to one with less! )
the Audio Quicklook is the original player I wrote for play sounds of any length. I could play a sound file as big as allowed on the system. The Sample Tool player I wrote for editing files in the Sample Tool, I originally wrote that one for trimming samples and minor edits. The other thing is the Sample Tool player only does mono and stereo whereas the Audio Quicklook player can do multichannel.