>This is compared to JACK, which I never managed to properly combine with PulseAudio.
Yeah making PulseAudio play nice with JACK seems to be tricky. Over time I configured it in four different environments (different Linux Distributions and/or Versions) and for each of them I had to do things (at least slightly) differently to get them to work.
Using JACK apps to route between PulseAudio apps under PipeWire is magic, as is being able to turn on external DACs after login and still be able to use them with JACK apps without restarting any software. Also PulseAudio not randomly switching to the wrong sample rate when I open pavucontrol is a blessing. (And it's so easy to setup, at least on Arch Linux.).
I have come to describe PW as like a superset of JACK and PulseAudio.
Also to note, #pipewire is very active on freenode, and wtay regularly drops into #lad.
I've first read about PipeWire about two months ago and I'd really love to try it. But! My setup is working and I'm really not the kind of person who likes to unnecessarily tamper with a smoothly running system. So I'll probably try it the next time I need to do a fresh install. Promise!
I found it tricky at first but got a mostly smooth setup on two machines now with wide variety of uses.
Definitely for day-to-day use the Ubuntu Studio app has actually been the most helpful (direct control / visibility into the Jack <-> PA bridging is great), or a combo of qjackctl and Carla for more Audio-focused stuff.
Yeah making PulseAudio play nice with JACK seems to be tricky. Over time I configured it in four different environments (different Linux Distributions and/or Versions) and for each of them I had to do things (at least slightly) differently to get them to work.