Unfortunately, things tend to get bounced around in shipping so a cord getting in the way of fan blades can happen. You did the right thing by opening the case and repositioning it.
There have been a number of threads with issues about booting the XPS 8500. Seems to be a variety of different problems, mostly related to BIOS settings for Windows 8. Some times all you have to do is drain the power from the PSU by unplugging it and then it'll boot. I wouldn't worry too much about that unless it becomes a recurrent issue.
Hope somebody can answer your audio question...