[2000_man]

I believe I have found the culprit. There is a bug in Audacity as explained in this thread . Read under "Extra notes about burning to CDs" specifically #2 where it states:

2- Make sure your Project Rate (Hz), as shown in the Project Rate button bottom left of the Audacity screen, matches the rate showing in the Track Panel (where the mute/solo buttons are). If you don't do this, and you're exporting WAV or AIFF files, silences may be added at the end of tracks and the labels may not export in the correct position. This is due to a bug when resampling is done between the Project and Track Rate upon export. If necessary you can select your track by clicking in the Track Panel then Project > Quick Mix, which will resample the track to the Project Rate. Then simply delete the excess silence generated at the end of the track and the export will have no added silence. In 1.3.3, click Tracks > Resample, and in the box that pops up, enter the rate showing in the Project Rate button.

My problem is that if I do as you were saying in "with the wav file in the window, on the file pulldown menu where you see the downward facing triangle > set rate > 44.1"

then the track sounds slow as molasses. I have to only change the project rate to 44100 and I keep the set rate -> 96000 in the downward facing triangle. Since they both need to be the same because of the bug that will result in silence, it won't work. So, I have to delete the excess silence in which they make it sound easy, but I have to magnify the track to the nth degree to see the last bit of sound to trim the silence off.