I don't think so. Jack was the only thing that did properly work with firefox, when at some time the default way did eat lots of cpu or do other strange things. And Jack does still work properly, with the only exception that once it was secretly upgraded from jack-1 to jack-2, and then nothing did work anymore, and I had to drop OSS-from-ports and go back to the default OSS.
In my understanding, there is a main difference, the difference between things that do work and things that do not work. And only on top of that comes the matter of quality.
For instance, if you happen to burn-in test a server board in the desktop, then there is no sound. That is *not works*. You need some device that can produce sound - and a one-dollar-fifty usb dongle will do the job. That sounds terrible, but if you need to listen to a video on how to disassemble your gadjawoo, you can then do that. So this is *works*.
And in my experience jack usually works.
Haha, I don't have that problem. I still don't have proper speakers.
I intended to buy some, but that reveals itself as a difficult issue. I cannot go to an audio shop, because after a maximum of two minutes there the sales person will be pissed of me and I will be very pissed of the salesperson - because, they want to know what sound I want to hear (and then sell me that); while I want to buy something that produces the sound that is on the media I play. So this just doesn't work out.
Then I got the idea instead to buy speakers from
Thomann. But that again is a difficult matter - the price-tags there are very, hm, scaleable - and I am lacking the expertise to understand what I would actually get for the money, i.e how much I should spend.