I just recently gave Linux a go to see if it could do all I want and I could be off Windows. I was entirely new to Linux. This potential solution is probably overkill, but you might like it.
My requirement was to be able to route all system audio through
Reaper (Digital Audio Workstation software), and be able to get low enough latency to play guitar+plugins, then audio goes out audio interface. This is how I use windows at present (with Reaper), and with an interface with as many channels you might need, one can do active speakers crossovers, and subs, room correction eq. and use headphone out on audio interface with its own appropriate settings (eq, crossfeed...)
Reaper has a Linux native version.
One issue was that the audio interface I wanted to ultimately use was not directly recognised. Not "USB Class Compliant", I guess. No linux drivers for it. But i pressed on, experimenting with a Behringer UMC, which worked for the exercise.
There was some messing about to get the system audio to all route to one place, and never route to the audio interface
directly - only through Reaper, which then passes audio to the interface. But I got it sorted (I think effectively I set up what shows to the Linux system as like another audio hardware output device, then that routes to reaper. All this was JACK/pipewire related in my attempted understanding).
I also made some .sh files that successfully allowed me to set different latency buffers, which otherwise wasn't obvious to do - couldn't do it through reaper like "normal". JACK was used in Reaper as the audio protocol.
I guess the point that's relevant to this thread is that once your audio is in Reaper, you can do anything you might imagine. And it was pretty successful, for that side of things.
Mostly. I then had to mess around a fair bit to get additional VST plugins working (used yabridge). Reaper has a lot of stock plugins though. and "REEQ" as an additional plugin did work without difficulty (js plugin). but VSTs were a problem, cause their GUIs couldn't be interacted with. I didn't solve that. and that ended up being one of "too annoying, too hard" deal breakers. I think my linux experiment is unfortunately over, even though I was fairly motived to get it working. (ps, I also had a usb bluetooth device that seemed recognised, but couldn't be enabled - spent a bit of time trying to get that working, but failed. another "too much stuff's a little too hard")
At some point I also used "Easy Effects", which could be used instead of or with Reaper. At some point I was using "Carla" for patchbay and FX adding in linux's pipewire. I don't know how correct all this stuff I'm saying is, as I was learning Linux stuff as I went.
Later I removed Carla and used Helvum instead for looking at routing/patchbay, and making connections if needed - but scripting and system changes seemed necessary to make routing "persistent" after reboots.
Anyway, no idea how much of this is completely useless, and probably completely beneath an existing linux user...
Oh, I also use Foobar2000 normally. no linux version of that. Using Wine
almost worked well enough. but not quite - not global hot keys, and slightly buggy sometimes in other ways. "Fooyin" player looked a lot like Foobar, but didn't quite seem to have some of the features I want. and frankly, I don't wanna change - I like Foobar.
... Windows it is going to have to be for me, at least for now.
TL;DR
Could use Reaper with linux
