Replying to myself here just to update.
Since I dont need the audio routing features in voicemeeter I am able to use easyeffects to do eq, only 1 problem: easyeffects only supports pipewire. luckily there is an easy solution, pipewire makes a drop in replacement for pulse audio called pipewire-pulse and that will work with easyeffects.
Now that I have that all working there really isnt anything keeping me on windows anymore, except gaming. I have no plans to move to linux gaming anytime soon (thats why I dual booted) but other than gaming arch is now my main os.