I suppose "more direct" can be interpreted differently, but to the best of my knowledge the signal from your cochlea takes more axonal jumps[0] than e.g. visual, which jumps "only" through LGM[1]. Even more direct is the olfactory pathway which skips the thalamus altogether[2].
However, in the context of the article you might be referring only to intertelencephalic processing, in which case I'd love to read a paper which compares the directness of hearing vs other modalities.
[0]: https://teachmeanatomy.info/neuroanatomy/pathways/auditory-p...
[1]: https://www.ophthalmologyreview.org/articles/the-afferent-vi...
[2]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2015.0004...
IIRC there are some areas that are localized almost in the sense of a circuit.
Hearing is an example, which needs to process sensory information much faster (and more direct) than ordinary pathways would, in order to be able to construct spatial representation from latency differences.