I did not experience this. I tested on a blank project with nothing but an imported audio file. No plugins.
About 8/10 times the audio would play ahead of where I clicked. Always the same “offset” to where on the waveform I clicked. I didn’t attempt to figure out what the offset was, just noticed it was always the same. 700ms sounds about right.
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That’s wild. Are you sure you don’t have any plugin in the Control Room?
What’s your Cubase.exe / general CPU load at the time you you are testing this?
Indeed the offset length is a fixed value. I talked about values because a similar bug is happening on MIDI Part but the other way around. CR isn’t even involved in this case and the delay is 700 ms precisely (the Cursor literally starts 700 ms back in time from where you click).
EDIT : Tested again with the the Ruler, the play tool offset in the Sample Editor is exactly and precisely 1000 ms / 1 second. (tested at 96 kHz). So this is not the same value as with MIDI Parts.
Follow up of my previous reply :
As you may now iZotope plugins exhibit the weird Cubase OpenGL bug which greatly increases Cubase.exe CPU usage when their GUI are open. The experiment above is with a clean project with only one audio track and no other load than the inserted plugin. (Cubase CPU usage goes from 3% to 21% with the plugin window open, just that…)
On another project with a lot of tracks and plugins, I have the play tool bug occurring almost all the time, and this is with all plugin windows closed! It’s probably because the CPU load is high enough already due to all the active plugins.
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Bug is known since years.
https://forums.steinberg.net/t/does-anybody-know-this-phenomenon-with-the-speaker-tool/127045
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So this is another symptom for the program code being out of control and the developers not being in charge anymore?
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Does anyone have a cheat sheet for navigating around this minefield of bugs in modern day Cubase? 
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- don’t use CR if you use the play tool
- don’'t use the range tool as it might create artifacts
- don’t use 48kHz and automatic tempo detection
- don’t use MIDI Remote
- don’t use musical mode on events that start on bar 1
- don’t use custom color for user interface
- back up Preferences folder very frequently
- don’t use MPEX algorithm on flatten realtime processing
- don’t use Import Tracks from Project for importing track settings
- don’t send MIDI from a GA instrument track to another instrument track
- don’t expect current project view to remain as is when adding a new track or opening a folder track
- don’t scroll with mouse wheel in the correct direction
- don’t use ARA if you don’t want your project file size to explode
- don’t trust FX Modulator to render correctly
- don’t use split track list as it leads to 2 events being selected simultaneously
- don’t use 7b9 minor chords in chord pads
- don’t use virgin territory for automation
Well, that’s just my personal list.
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Lol! 
What I found out is:
The Play tool behaves correctly ONLY when Control Room is turned off.
I have also had the problem for years that the signal is played randomly in the editor. I have tried to solve it many times, so far without success. At the moment it’s really annoying because I want to edit guitars with the warp function, but I never know whether I’m getting the right signal. Every time I press play at the same point in the song, it plays a different signal in the editor. Does anyone have a solution for this?
Work directly in the project, not in the Sample Editor. The play tool works fine there.
Or switch off Control Room.
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