Reading through the link chain, it seems the Western Digital drives being shipped in those laptops really should have never made it into consumers’ hands.

The kernel argument nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 is being used to restrict the power state latency in order to keep the drive out of its lowest power state (because of course yet another cheaply-made device has terrible power state management).

While most distros generally expect NVMe drive to not completely cease functioning while at idle (as should be expected really), AntiX is likely keeping the drive above its minimal power state. Whether this is intentional, unintentional, or from a lack of general power state management provided by the distro isn’t something I know. It would require some digging in the source tree for the distro most likely to find if there are any deliberate restrictions to power saving, especially regarding NVMe.

The headphones you have don’t have any actual surround sound capabilities. The only thing they do is have a software driver that maps a set of channels from 7.1 surround sound to the binaural sound mapping of the headphones.

The pipewire sound server can do the same thing as iCue with filter chains and specific plugins. See this post for some pointers and guidance if you wish to set it up for yourself.

Do note that unless you have content built with actual 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, there won’t be much actual benefit to using virtual surround sound on headphones in the first place.