Yes, and it was off by default, because it had even bigger problems than PA.

I'll skip the usual list of personal anecdotes about PA failing in surprising ways I've never seen in 15+ years of using Alsa, but I will say that since a few applications have started depending on it, "apt-get purge pulseaudio" seems to always be in my shell history.

You know, that by doing that, you are trading short term gain for long term pain?

Dmix for alsa was buggy, because just like PA, it didn't know about quirks of the hardware out in the field. And it stayed buggy, because nobody used it in return. Yes, PA was forced on users, but in the result the quirks were found, implemented and today, we all are better off. I didn't have any problem with PA since 2012 or so, but quite enjoyed the features it brought to the desktop.