Pipewire seams to be the new standard when it comes to audio backends on linux, but as of writing pulse audio is still being shipped and used with Ubuntu 22.04.3
Now if you want to mange your audio with software, there is a good piece of software called easy effects witch can be found on flathub: https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects It requires that you use pipewire.
Another good reason to switch is that Bluetooth devies work a lot better in my experience with pipewire.
First you need to actually install pipewire and all it needs to work
sudo apt install pipewire-media-session- wireplumber
sudo apt install pipewire-audio-client-libraries
And you need to enabe wireplumber
systemctl --now enable wireplumber.service
Now if you want audio Bluetooth to be handled by pipewire
sudo apt install libldacbt-{abr,enc}2 libspa-0.2-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
Now reboot and check if pipewire is being used
LANG=C pactl info | grep '^Server Name'
GLHF