Way back in the day, I used PulseAudio’s network source/sink capability quite a bit; mpd running on my server with Pulse network was fun. I actually ran the Windows build of Pulse in my dual boot at the time so it could have a continuous mpd experience. (Yes I know you could just output to an encoded stream or whatever, but the seamless experience was Really Cool)

I also didn’t really have any issues with Pulse even back then; honestly I kind of liked it. I stopped using desktop Linux well before Pipewire released, though :(