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by smt88 3802 days ago
I switched from desktop Linux to Windows entirely because of Lennart Poettering. Audio was a complete disaster, as you mentioned. (This was only a few months ago.)
1 comments

What was so wrong with Linux audio, if you don't mind?

I experience about zero problems. Maybe it's because I don't run pulseaudio.

PulseAudio seems to get by far the most development and support. I tried ALSA and couldn't get any sound at all, and it didn't seem to be very well integrated into my shell. I did get ALSA to work on my laptop, but there were still lots of tradeoffs.
Shell, as in Gnome-Shell? No surprises there if so.

That said, at its core Pulseaudio depends on ALSA for the hardware handling.

Frankly the only useful thing Pulseaudio does it handle inputs and outputs when dealing with multiple sound devices. But then so does JACK.

Everything else, from volume control (hello hearing damage with default settings) to bit rate mangling, is massively superfluous.