I do literally none of these things though. My speakers have a headphone port which works perfectly 100% of the time without needing an entire new sound server

I do literally none of these things though. My speakers have a headphone port which works perfectly 100% of the time without needing an entire new sound server to route all audio through. There's a reason my sound has continued to work properly for years, and that's because I didn't "fix it" when it wasn't broken. ;)