Does this not contradict your argument? Without automatic connections the user now does need to know all about the jack application framework since otherwise they cannot get a jack application to make a sound. Maybe that is just in the details of what you are trying to say, but either the user needs to know a lot about several different applications and do it all for themselves, or if they know little to nothing they need to have the system do what it can for them.
I agree that there needs to be an option to either auto-connect or not, my personal opinion is that auto-connect should be the default since the alternative of knowing everything puts too high a barrier to entry on Linux systems. What I mean by "knowing everything" is that without some auto-config then a first time user needs to find out and understand all the reasons and options that are preventing their application generating audio. The opposing situation is that an experienced user would have to find out the correct way to tune their environment overriding the auto-config features, something they are going to have to do anyway. There are plenty of similar mandates from other musical technologies, even MIDI specified that an instrument, per default, should always come up first time in OMNI mode and accept MIDI from any channel. That way the first time user can connect a cable and get started. Once they are happy they can bolt down their own channels, settings, etc, that fit their developing environment.
This subject has come up at several times before and auto-connect/config are often seen as 'dumbing down'. This is generally not the case since the apps almost invariably have enough options for people to tweak and play with so the whole installation is not any dumber, it just has a lower barrier to entry.
All this talk about speaker combinations does not really relate to auto-connect, no? If somebody has indeed built such a configuration and made it work then they should probably be relied upon to prevent automatic connections and a variety of other mistakes since otherwise, if they are not aware of how to do so, they will probably end up inflicting the same damage on themselves, ie, they should know to look into these issues beforehand or should not have deployed and been in charge of such an impressive installation.
Regards, Nick.
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