John, I think you may have hit the nail on the head, but I’m confused as to why this would be an issue, since importing video works just fine from this external. The audio’s bitrate is 4608kbps whereas a lot my video is around 40000kbps (hacked GH2) or 50000kbps (5D2).
I just tested my older externals and found that importing the same audio file I posted the screenshots of worked perfectly from there. The newer external I’m using is 5400RPM whereas the older ones I have are 7200RPM.
Very interesting that the audio would appear so corrupted after importing from a slower harddrive rather than simply lagging like video, which is what I would have assumed would have happened if my drive were too slow.