If you stopped using Macs before CoreAudio was invented, I don't really even know what to say, other than I'd have run away from running digital audio on an App

If you stopped using Macs before CoreAudio was invented, I don't really even know what to say, other than I'd have run away from running digital audio on an Apple II, too :) Your bad luck was that you bailed out of the MacOS audio subsystems just when they started to get good.