Why so aggressive? I didn’t make any claims other than less than USB2.
And for reference, I was assuming 384 kHz, 32 bit depth, which would be 196 Mbps at 16 channels. You cannot even do 32 channels over USB2 which would be the next logical step.
Sorry you got offended, that wasn't my intention. Pointing out inaccuracies is not aggressive, and in this case, I was reinforcing your claim, by saying USB2 is not only capable of tens of audio channels, but hundreds.
I was just adding context, and I'm happy you provided even more. 32/384 is indeed at the extreme top of digital audio signals, beyond what many people consider to be useful. Even in such cases, USB2 can still do the job, but most modern devices will use USB3 or Thunderbolt, simply to avoid issues and ensure enough headroom on the digital bus.
some inexpensive SDR dongles sidestep the question of getting a really good high-bandwidth ADC (still not cheap even today!) by just hooking up an intermediate frequency stage which downmixes RF to AF, and then you just hook it to one of the innumerable sound cards on the market to pull it into the PC for processing etc.
Wider bandwidth is wider bandwidth, the faster your sample rate the wider the range that you can sample. Iirc it's nyquist rate, so, with 384kbps rate you can sample a 192khz window.
Are you really taking a discussion about audio and making some sort of niche invented case of making a sound card be the analog to digital conversion from a software defined radio?
Even in that case 32 bit sampling is nonsense, the resolution of detecting voltages is never going to be accurate enough to need 4 billion different levels.
I'm actually quite serious, of the people who are buying really hi-fi audio inputs, it's not unlikely a large number of them are quite interested in the actual bandwidth of the input. They're using that sampling headroom for something else (oversampling).
Regulation and stabilization is a whole ""niche"" area of electronics called "voltage regulation" and yes, you can improve it a lot (and you can only do your best regardless of instability of the base). Actually a lot of audio engineers would be feeding it clean (linear regulated) power in this case as well. My Astron linear supplies are quite clean for radio and would be excellent for audio too.
USB optoisolator + linear regulated supply on a hub on the other side is something I've seriously considered for a nice SDR setup even short of that.
Again, of the people who buy this stuff, yes you will find a lot of people paying attention to the details and buying/building esoteric setups. Hams exist and the hobby almost inherently involves opening up the checkbook lol. Even decent audio gear is generally going to be $500-1000 most of the time.
While I agree with you, you can find 384 kHz 32-bit playback available on many of their LG cell phones as a marketing feature. Does it matter? No. Does it exist, even in consumer electronics? Yes.
And for reference, I was assuming 384 kHz, 32 bit depth, which would be 196 Mbps at 16 channels. You cannot even do 32 channels over USB2 which would be the next logical step.