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CS degrees are generally not useful with system configuration, and they demonstrably do not cover the concepts associated with audio on computers.

I know dozens of people who've had experiences isomorphic to yours on OS X/macOS, so the truthfulness of this anecdote isn't particularly useful in establishing anything.

But yes, as a casual user who doesn't understand or want to understand the design decisions that led to the current state of audio on a typical Linux machine, macOS will provide a much smoother experience.

I wrote JACK. I know the guys who wrote SoundFlower. I asked them why they wrote SoundFlower when JACK already existed. They said it was because 90% of their user base never wanted 90% of what JACK made possible, so they cooked up a really simple version. "But it barely does anything!" I insisted, grumpily. "Precisely", they said.

If you don't understand the engineering mindset that says that you probably shouldn't do this, then certainly, macOS will look like a much better idea (along with SoundFlower).

That will likely remain true until you run into a situation involving one of the many things that JACK makes possible (note however that I generally advise most new/casual users against using JACK these days, not because it is broken but because as your comment demonstrates, it doesn't make sense to the mindset/workflow that they bring to the table).




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