Good news: I no longer NEED foobar2000 for a good EQ plugin and a virtual surround headphone experience. Pipewire finally made it possible for me to enjoy good music coming from any program.

Bad news: foobar2000 still has way too many good management features that I've yet to see implemented to the same degree in a Linux app.

But at least now I CAN enjoy some light music listening without going through Wine.

Some resources for people interested in virtual surround for headphones on Linux:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Filter-Chain#virtual-surround

https://sourceforge.net/projects/hesuvi/