I've been using pure Alsa for 5 years and I don't understand what the fuck do you need pulseaudio or pipewire for. Alsa just does what it's told and does it with the utmost reliability. And you can do the fuck you want with it, route your audio around like it's Jack or apply parametric EQ to your fucking microphone.
If you're not using raw Alsa you're doing Linux wrong.
>>106183646 (OP)
audio has always been the worst aspect for me. pipewire still breaks with my bluetooth+virtual sinks setup so i'm back on pulseaudio. what's the problem with pulse, anyway?