The Vero 4K won’t have any problem with a USB sound card. You can find cheap and cheerful ones but I have no idea how good they will be and if they will meet your requirements.
I suspect you may have been using a USB soundcard on your PC which would be a bit more flexible. The 3.5mm out on the Vero 4K is intended to provide:
- a CVBS output
- a good audio output for headphones
- a good audio output for two speakers
But it’s not an amplifier, and really it sounds like you need one.
The Vero 4K should be a fair bit faster than a Pi. But it depends on the workload. Some add-ons won’t show a performance benefit because they are single threaded.
The Vero 4K is faster than a Pi 3 for:
- Network workloads (Ethernet and WiFi)
- CPU workloads (faster cores)
- IO workloads (eMMC)
But this relies on your use case taking advantage of this.
There are also a variety of other reasons to go with a Vero 4K. 10-bit HEVC support; 4K support; 802.11ac; optical out; five years support. There are other reasons but this isn’t a sales pitch.
I am sorry you are not happy with your Vero 4K and want to make things right. If you’d like to call me I’d be more than obliged to help, just let me know.
Sam