Yeah, you won't find many niche communities here, unfortunately. However, you can usually find answers in what could be considered adjacent communities. People may still be helpful. As a random, off-the-cuff example, if you had a specific question about a model of synthesizer, you could probably get away with asking something in a music community that has a decent amount of traffic.

Users that have been around a bit know the challenges with limited communities so slightly off-topic, informational discussion is usually handled fairly well.

I also missed the traffic at first, but I don't any more. Hell, it used to be super quiet on Lemmy not too long ago but it really has picked up. Along with the traffic came more trolls, more arguments, etc, but it's not too bad. Less traffic, but feedback can be much higher quality and it's easier to reach consensus with multi-user discussions.

At the end of the day, Lemmy isn't Reddit. Once your dopamine receptors have the chance to adjust, it'll be ok. It may feel like there is less participation because people aren't being algorithmically driven to controversy. In many ways, Lemmy can be closer to what "real" Internet discussion is like.