That's often also the problem with Linux and audio.
The easiest way is to connect Ardour directly through ALSA to an audio interface . The second easiest way is IMHO jackd and if you want to get in some trouble it's Pipewire (at least within the development state mar 2023).
What's the current problem with Pipewire? Pulse (for simple audio stuff) and Jack (for low latency stuff) integrations both work fine for me, so I'm wondering what problems you've run into recently are.
In my recent experience the problem isn't pipewire per se but rather how it interacts with rtkit (it's particularly bad with the FocusRite interface recommended above for home users). You can set it up to request realtime capabilities directly but you're going against the workflow and at that point you might as well use jack since you're going to be fiddling around anyways.
Though honestly, on Linux I just use ALSA for everything and don't think about it after that. By definition neither Jack nor Pipewire can be faster than the ALSA they are talking to.
You're not wrong, and I suspect it has something to do with hardware. My Behringer U-Phoria worked fine on Linux, then my Scarlett shit itself, then I replaced it with a MOTU M2 which does just fine. If you interface isn't USB-class-compliant, don't expect it to work on Linux.
> By definition neither Jack nor Pipewire can be faster than the ALSA they are talking to.
Sure, but that's like saying that you don't need an operating system when you can compile to baremetal. Both Jack and Pipewire are slower, but offer pretty substantial routing options on top of that. Furthermore, I believe both protocols support ALSA connections too.
I use Bitwig on NixOS and it's not too bad with PipeWire. Latency and routability generally rivals CoreAudio, which is good enough for me.
IME Bitwig is heavyweight enough it doesn't really matter what you're connecting with, plus it "wants" Pipewire (IIRC that's the only thing CLAP will work with?)
And I don't want to sound like I'm dumping on Pipewire; I think the work Wim has been doing is absolutely awesome and (unlike a lot of what FDo puts out) actually solves existing problems rather than hypothetical ones. It's just not quite (yet) what I need as a DJ and looper.
The problem is, that it's crackling also in normal use. The log always says, that the client is too slow.
Maybe it's my sound card (driver) which I doubt because it should make no problems with a Focusrite interface. However ... I'm tired of tuning the system when I want to make music.
So pipewire is really cool but not usable for pro audio yet (IMHO)
