Feels like a weird thing to spend so much effort optimizing but neat as heck to see. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-USB-Audio-Offload
How many shipping devices use USB for audio? I was under the impression that most phones/tablets/laptops support usb audio, but it is a niche/power user feature, and not the way the main device speakers are connected.
Do these same systems have bluetooth audio offload so the system can sleep for multiple minutes while a song is playing via bluetooth? (which seems to be a far more common usecase)
With 3.5mm stereo jacks gone, I do think there are some folks who use USB audio a lot now! But it also feels like it's gotta be a pretty small crowd! This sure feels like a long long way to go to give these select few a battery life boost! It'd be interesting to know how big the impact is, to at least weigh this long effort.
Like you, would love to know if there's anything cute folks have done for offloading Bluetooth! my gut says there are vastly vastly vastly more Bluetooth users.
Also, I guess there are a good bunch of devices that have audio interfaces that, internally, might be connected to the USB bus.
But I'm also thinking about sound "processing" oriented hardware that could run Linux. Sound recorders, mixers, synths, smart speakers... that could be based on an SBC or an ARM or similar processor.