Sound card works fine on USB2 (RME for example has cards on USB2 that can manage 30/30 io at 192khz without issue at low latency if you have the CPU to deal with the load)
With USB3 you have 94 i/o…
For years pci has not been mandatory for audio. UAD, Apogee, RME and other high end brands will push you to them. Or even only provide them as usb device… even Thunderbolt is not needed here.
And that’s been the case for a while! My Fireface UC from 15 years ago can deal with 16 channels at 96khz at 256 sample. On PC and Mac.
Sound card works fine on USB2 (RME for example has cards on USB2 that can manage 30/30 io at 192khz without issue at low latency if you have the CPU to deal with the load)
With USB3 you have 94 i/o…
For years pci has not been mandatory for audio. UAD, Apogee, RME and other high end brands will push you to them. Or even only provide them as usb device… even Thunderbolt is not needed here.
And that’s been the case for a while! My Fireface UC from 15 years ago can deal with 16 channels at 96khz at 256 sample. On PC and Mac.