Ah ok so from what im hearing, because the kernal on the deck hasn’t been updated with a codec that you prefer for these headphones, they sound worse. That sucks man. I would hope it wouldn’t be the same case for other distros but if your headphones are newer that can make it more difficult to have compatibility. Takes a while for Linux to catch up on most stable distributions is my understanding.

And I use Reaper! Love Reaper a ton, clean and easy to use daw for $60 bucks (small business/personal use) I’m currently on Fedora 40.

I’m a musician who is just getting started producing on Linux. I haven’t had issues with audio aside from my audio interface not being compatible due to have software control for hardware which i hated anyways. Using a focuarite interface now and its been good. Pulseaudio has been pretty solid for a while now which is what the steamdeck uses from what i can see online.

Both my mic and headphones have worked great with all distros I’ve tried. That said, sometimes stuff just doesn’t wanna play well with Linux, even if it seems like it should and im typically not using bluetooth devices on Linux for audio so im not as familiar with issues they may have.

You might try another set of headphones to see if its an issue with the headohones themselves. And or, try them with a different distro/pc because it may be a issue with the deck itself.