So I've been an audio guy for a long time. I've been using audacity and ardour since the very beginning, and used Linux solely in all my university music from 2000-2004. I've been following the audio development on linux for the last 20 years from a distance, but have recently returned to the fold, and just finished mixing and mastering a large (30+ song) project in Reaper on linux, using native and win64 plugins through yabridge.
Being back in Linux is awesome.
But Pipewire is a bit of a mess, and it doesn't have the types of tools we need to be able to control connections.
For example, When I load up Reaper on Linux, I get every audio connection connecting to Reaper. My internal card, and my Behringer audio interface. But they are always connecting to Reaper in a different order. This slows down my productivity, as I always have to reconnect my proper outputs to the Reaper Main outs. In addition, there is really no way to disallow connections, everything is automatic, and wireplumber is a session manager that is ridiculously difficult to manage. I still haven't found an actual tutorial on how to use this.
I find it strange that almost wholesale, we have switched over to pipewire, when the interface of using it is almost nothing. I can't find proper tutorials on controlling connections, The website for both pipewire and wireplumber have no helpful information on how to control this software. Even pavucontrol doesn't help.
Anyone have any suggestions? Having audio auto connect to devices on their own, with no control drives me crazy.
Otherwise, I feel like maybe we should all slow this transition down a little bit, until the control methods are a little easier to manage.