I have 4 different boxes, both Intel and AMD, upgraded from 39 to 40 and fresh. The Pulseaudio-pipewire stuff just doesn’t work great. I get cutouts switching between apps, and just at random sometimes. Also on one of my gnome boxes (which is fresh 40) I’m pretty sure it’s creating a mysterious race condition where gnome-shell spikes to 20-30% CPU use and the UI locks for a solid half second while the audio cuts. It only occurs when I have two or more apps that can do audio open and it’s solved if an HDMI monitor is plugged in (I think that device as an output option somehow makes the race condition not happen) but I’ve never been able to exactly pin down a log error I can understand to be “AHA, it’s definitely the audio stuff,” so I’ve never filed a bug report, but I’m pretty sure it’s the audio thing because of the causes and solutions. But even if I’m falsely blaming the audio for that, I have multiple other boxes where they get audio cutouts that weren’t there on 39, like if I’m playing music and then pause it and turn on a YouTube video in a browser (or vice versa) the whole system mutes for a beat and THEN the audio kicks in, missing the first like half second of audio in the second app. At any rate, I’m really hoping once 41 is out that issue will be resolved, it drives me crazy.

Edit: I forgot I also have a 5th box I took out of circulation because post-40, the whole pulseaudio-pipewire audio service freezes up. This makes all consumers of audio just freeze up (so like all YouTube videos just hang and never start) and soooometimes you can restart the service, usually you need to reboot. I messed around a bunch, never figured out a real fix that works (I did get it stable, but only working with VLC, everything else was muted). I’ve been waiting for 41 to see if I’m going to move that to another distro or fresh 41 it