Package sof-firmware was previously marked as a dependency in 2 metapackages – manjaro-pulse and manjaro-pipewire
But sof-firmware is not a required dependency of either PulseAudio or PipeWire
Sound Open Firmware is required for Intel laptops to support digital array microphones in ALSA
Users on Intel laptops should change this package in pamac-manager by clicking on Mark as explicitly installed
Intel desktop systems might need Sound Open Firmware in the future when it supports use of onboard audio processing. But I do not know of any plans to add DSP support, so it is not likely to be happening soon
AMD Audio Co-Processor support for digital microphones is included in the kernel, so AMD systems do not require this package