The sound of FreeBSD in bitperfect mode with real-time sound settings is actually higher quality than what comes out of a Creative Zx sound card when using windows11. If FreeBSD is too advanced (for your skills) then there is GhostBSD which is very user-friendly:
I abandoned sound cards about a decade ago. Only pass through external devices (AV receivers) will do for me. With full bandwidth HDMI audio 5.1ch works great on both Windows and just about any version of Linux.
Does ASIO do anything quality-wise, apart from lower latency? Pipewire is very mighty and flexible, so I wouldn't expect any general degradation.
I agree. It is mainly the audio quality via analog connections (the green 3.5 mm jack) that is not as good in Linux and windows11 (wasapi) When I play audio in Linux via HDMI --> SPDIF (instead of analog) it sounds much better. Don't ask me why this is, but I have never managed to get decent audio quality over the analog connection in Linux. I have already used mpv + Jack (instead of PulseAudio) and I have also tested PipeWire. But those don't change much in terms of audio quality in Linux for analog connections. I haven't tested ASIO yet. When I say that windows11 does not have an equivalent sound quality to FreeBSD I am speaking specifically about wasapi in combination with an analog connection.
Not noticing any difference between Windows and Linux, can only think of some weird driver or resampling issue.
