Yeah, Fedora is into the open source only install thing. So Codecs don't get installed by default and need to added later. Don't feel bad about it. That catches a lot of first time users. They do make it pretty easy to get them installed once you know you need to do that.
The speaker thing was unfortunate. I'm notorious for buying the cheapest hardware I can find. And I think I only had that popping issue once years ago when distros were far more rough around the edges then they are today. My problem with Fedora is that it loses my printer randomly. But I don't print a lot, so I haven't bothered with looking for a fix.
You've still got a lot of surfing to do yet, and you've tried Fedora. CatchyOS is supposed to be pretty beginner-friendly for an Arch fork. But I'm not sure CatchyOS has a really high user retention rate. I should look into it one day, but I'm old, and my surfing days are over. I like atomic spins because once setup they require no effort on my part anymore. They are boring and I like it that way.