There were popular audio daemons before PulseAudio took over, though. It's not like it entered a completely empty "market", if you will. Nobody was mad at the a

There were popular audio daemons before PulseAudio took over, though. It's not like it entered a completely empty "market", if you will. Nobody was mad at the authors of those, even though in fact they did also suck. Nobody seems upset over Pipewire. So I don't think you've found the reason.