Guide Layers
Added 2017-01-20 16:00:00 +0000 UTCYou probably know about guide layers. If you don't, there's a check you can put on a layer to make it a guide that is only visible in it's comp, but it doesn't render. This way you can have a background image or composition, that doesn't show in it's parent comp.
But I just figured out that it also works for audio too! So, if you work like me, you can put the audio in your precomps and set it to be a guide layer (by right clicking on the layer) so that in your main comp, the audio doesn't get doubled up when you render (which I seem to do on every first render I do...ugh).