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by Someone 3567 days ago
"USB requires drivers, and introduces timing and electrical interference issues"

On multi-tasking OSes with memory protection, everything that accesses hardware requires drivers; it's 'just' the amount of driver code that differs (which, for USB vs optical, probably is quite a big difference)

Also, originally USB didn't support isochronous channels at all, so one couldn't guarantee that one could send audio out continuously.