Comment by amlib

> Carla requires Jack which defaults to non usable state at every installation and is a nightmare to set up in a reproducible way

I've been using linux audio for the last 15 years and I've been trough it all. However, things have much improved since I've switched to Pipewire. No more need for a bespoke implementation of the jack daemon, it's implemented natively right there in Pipewire, vastly simplifying setup and removing any annoyances that keeping the Jack daemon working entailed. As a bonus any jack client/jack graph visualizer, including carla, gets a direct view to all Pipewire clients, not just native jack clients. You can then use Carla to route audio directly from your hardware inputs and outputs trough, for example, pulseaudio client (blissfully unaware of whats happening) and then trough as many jack clients as you wish. It's truly a magical™ piece of software.

As for Carla, make sure you are in the "Multiple Clients" mode, activate the experimental features and check "Enable plugin bridges" and "Run plugins in bridge mode when possible". This seems to make it more stable and make it so that if a plugin crashes Carla will disable it and at worst you will lose the related plugin parameters.

I've been running Carla with Pipewire for more then a year as my system wide DSP stack (almost like a virutal AV Reciever) and its fairly stable.