Hello, thank you for the feedback :)
1) I don't think you can do anything currently for faster load times except having your sound files on an ssd. But it won't resolve the burden on your memory.
I experimented with streaming the files from the disk rather than loading them fully. But it was not reactive enough for me and was a bit worse performance wise. Still, in your case it could be a better solution. I had not the very long sounds in mind. I'll try in a future version to give an option for the user to set it to full file load or streaming (either setting it by track or for all tracks). But It won't be for the very next release.
2) I'll check that, thank you for reporting.