The irony of your comment is that a huge part of PipeWire being this good is the work of the PulseAudio devs. When PA first came out, the experience was terribl

The irony of your comment is that a huge part of PipeWire being this good is the work of the PulseAudio devs. When PA first came out, the experience was terrible because it exercised drivers in a way that plain ALSA or previous audio daemons had not done. Over the years, the drivers got their shit together, so now PipeWire has competent drivers to work with. That's not to say that PipeWire is not an impressive achievement in its own right (it absolutely is!), but it's not as much of an uphill battle than what PulseAudio had to fight.