📚 New user. Experience sound problems (output pitch is off)

So I'm a new user. I've spent the entire afternoon trying to figure this out and I just don't know.

I've downloaded and installed 5 different distros through virtual box (first, in order to decide which one I want to use permanently) and I'm experiencing sound output with a noticeably high pitch in every distro. First I thought it had to do with installing Brave Browser because it didn't happen until after I installed it and restarted, but I've tried it with other distros.... not installing brave/installing brave, installing a codec pack/and not, app update pack/not, installing pulseaudio and killing it in the terminal. Basically, trial and error to see what is causing/what might fix it because it doesn't happen on a fresh install....until just now when I installed a fresh KDE Neon and it happened immediately after the first startup, checking via youtube.

At this point I'm ready to ditch the entire idea of switching to Linux altogether...(Devs, you want people to use Linux but they have problems right out of the box. WTF?) but I'm wondering if the conflict is simply with being in a virtual setting rather than being installed on a HD as a dedicated OS. I could use some help before this makes me go insane, thanks.