But sure, if you need names permanently right there and are ok to lose space to show them, and if the handle is inconveniently small to only fit the text, then yes, you wouldn't lose space in that case. You'd only have other issues.
But that coupling likely has other design implications, e.g., you're unlikely to get an option to only show names on hover instead of having a bar, or to show names as an overlay (in many cases the names aren't that long to need to take the height of the the whole segment)
"Audio 1 #1" "Audio 1 #1" "Audio 1 #1"
"Audio 1 #1" "Audio 1 #1"
names replacing the audio wave height!
But sure, if you need names permanently right there and are ok to lose space to show them, and if the handle is inconveniently small to only fit the text, then yes, you wouldn't lose space in that case. You'd only have other issues.
But that coupling likely has other design implications, e.g., you're unlikely to get an option to only show names on hover instead of having a bar, or to show names as an overlay (in many cases the names aren't that long to need to take the height of the the whole segment)