Linux audio has been a cluster^$%< of epic proportions since the mid 1990s. At least you can make single application systems work well these days, but Windows has really whipped the llamas ass on the audio front for 30+ years now, in terms of “it just works” user experience - without being hyper-draconian on the application ecosystem.
It definitely depends on what you are trying to get out of it.
I’ll grant: low lag audio performance in Windows is… dismal. Which is why everyone had conference call lag adjustment issues in 2020, “go ahead”, “no you go ahead”, “ok” - both start talking simultaneously again… It seems better these days, I’m sure that’s at least in part due to training of the conference participants, but maybe they have been working on getting the lag down without too many dropout / stutters.
We have a bespoke low lag audio system that was specifically implemented in Linux even though we put the GUI in Windows because of those lag / stutter issues, years back the audio was done on a dedicated DSP chip, but a Core i7 is more than up to the task on Linux these days.
The Linux audio pains I refer to were: A) audio just doesn’t work at all, and B) audio works, until you start to try to use two audio applications simultaneously - then they start to mess each other up. Both of those were better in Windows long before Linux came up to speed. But a lot of how Windows audio gets acceptable performance is big laggy buffers.
Linux audio has been a cluster^$%< of epic proportions since the mid 1990s. At least you can make single application systems work well these days, but Windows has really whipped the llamas ass on the audio front for 30+ years now, in terms of “it just works” user experience - without being hyper-draconian on the application ecosystem.
I had (and still have) way more issues with Audio on Windows then I ever had on Linux.
And I have seen it all, OSS, ALSA, aRts, EsounD, pulseaudio, pipewire and most likely some more that I have forgotten.
It definitely depends on what you are trying to get out of it.
I’ll grant: low lag audio performance in Windows is… dismal. Which is why everyone had conference call lag adjustment issues in 2020, “go ahead”, “no you go ahead”, “ok” - both start talking simultaneously again… It seems better these days, I’m sure that’s at least in part due to training of the conference participants, but maybe they have been working on getting the lag down without too many dropout / stutters.
We have a bespoke low lag audio system that was specifically implemented in Linux even though we put the GUI in Windows because of those lag / stutter issues, years back the audio was done on a dedicated DSP chip, but a Core i7 is more than up to the task on Linux these days.
The Linux audio pains I refer to were: A) audio just doesn’t work at all, and B) audio works, until you start to try to use two audio applications simultaneously - then they start to mess each other up. Both of those were better in Windows long before Linux came up to speed. But a lot of how Windows audio gets acceptable performance is big laggy buffers.