media-plugins/alsa-plugins[usbstream] - what's it for?

[Ant P.]

I noticed this appeared recently enabled by default, and aplay -L shows it as an output for my HDA card (which very obviously isn't USB). I can't find any description of what it does online - or upstream for that matter. Anyone know what it is? Do I need it? (probably not, but you never know)

[Ionen]

I always wondered why it's default myself, I recall seeing 1 user talk that they're using it a while back but generally I don't think most people need it given they'll just want alsa-plugins for the pulseaudio/jack plugins.

I don't know much about it either (I also don't use USB audio devices, for now anyway), but I believe this plugin also require jack to be used looking at things like this page.

Long story short, if you don't know if you need it or not, I'm sure you actually don't.
Edit: this wouldn't work without some setting up, so...