I'm not a musician, but I've seen plenty of DJs setup their gear. It is clear that the connectors and cables are designed to be physically durable. They work in environments where even a beefed up USB cable would only last a few gigs, since building compact connectors for consumer grade electronics is at odds with the day to day reality of commercial applications.

I'm sure that other factors play a role. The economics of going digital would be terrible if it meant replacing a significant amount of equipment every time a new standard took over the market. Again, pointing to USB (since that it what everyone seems to associate with universal digital connections), we have seen three major iterations and a number of minor ones over the past 30 years. That's hardly the type of cycle that businesses want to hop onto given that a tiny operation requires thousands of dollars of equipment, where any given component may be anywhere from a couple of years old to over a decade old.

> we have seen three major iterations and a number of minor ones over the past 30 years.

... None of which broke existing functionality. I can plug a full-speed device from 2000 into a USB-3 A port and it will work perfectly (as long as there is still software support for the vendor-specific drivers that might have been necessary for non-class-compliant devices).

Except for USB, they are all analogue, and some are mutually interchangeable.

3.5mm TRS, dual 3.5mm TS, dual RCA, 1/4" TRS, dual 1/4" TS, XLR cables transfer the same kind of signal, and you can easily convert between the connector with dongles.

Mixers have all of these so that you wouldn't have to.

The utility is not thinking about where the f***ing dongle is when you just want to plug something in.

Most modern mixers support toslink (and even coaxial sometimes), especially ones that are specifically oriented towards timecode control.

my gear has toslink as well

One man's clutter is another man's treasure. I hate dongles and extra parts, give me a fuckton of different ports!

Yes, exactly, let’s suggest musicians to use USB-C, and every third cable won’t work, and they will be able to make a concert but with no guitar, exactly like the devices in front of us when we try to work.

The only insurance against “the USB-C downtime” is a subscription to Amazon Prime 24hrs delivery and another $68 (no kidding) Apple cable.

> Yes, exactly, let’s suggest musicians to use USB-C

Not sure what you mean - I said didn't really apply to analogue.