[jcelerier]

> current audio production systems have the DAW software directly opening an ALSA device.

I mean, I remember this being the case for a very long time on windows with ASIO too, which is the only reasonable way to run a DAW with acceptable latency there. MacOS has multi-client but I was never able to get latency as low as fine-tuned windows and Linux systems, and in the end that's what matters - you just use your motherboard's chip for OS audio and your pro soundcard for the actual workload. Pipewire is very close to giving a good experience but there'll always be some overhead - I'm making some art installations running various chains of audio effects on a raspberry pi zero and the difference between going through pipewire even if my app (https://ossia.io) is the only process doing any sound, and going straight to ALSA, is night and day in terms of "how many reverbs I can stupidly chain before I hear a crack".

[frabert]

My presonus interface allows multiple applications to access it over ASIO simultaneously, while letting regular Windows audio through, at 16 samples of latency. ASIO does not mandate exclusive access, bad drivers do.