For many years, I have been frustrated by how flimsy the audio cables from my headphones and loudspeakers are. They don't use USB, but some sort of analogue audio standard plug. I can't tell you how many times I've been forced to gently tap these connectors, or pull the cable repeatedly, because it drops one channel so it becomes super low-volume with just audio coming from the left ear, etc. This happens all the time for me, and has been the same for numerous different computers and headphones and loudspeakers over the years.
What I wonder is: why do they use this analogue audio plug interface? Why not USB? As much as I hate USB (for other reasons), at least they are physically kept in place firmly, and not sticking out far and easily jerked around like the audio plugs.
Maybe there actually are USB headphones and loudspeakers, but they certainly don't seem to be standard by any means.
Does this have something to do with them having to go through the "sound card"? I haven't had a dedicated sound card for many years, always using the built-in motherboard "audio out" and "audio in" connectors on all computers I have had since year 2000.
I don't know whether dedicated audio cards have USB output now.
Wouldn't a USB headphone/loudspeaker, thus being fully digital, guarantee better audio on top of physically keeping in place? Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something about audio? I do remember having massive problems with an external USB sound card, but it only used USB to connect to the PC -- not for the actual audio output.