As someone who works with a lot of pro audio gear on the Mac, I can say that it's hard to describe what a show stopper this is. Glitches and dropouts are a catastrophic problem for almost anything involving sound, and they're right: If you're having those kinds of problems, you run immediately to the interface manufacturer.
Still, I'm not sure many people using pro-grade audio interfaces (mine cost almost as much as the computer itself) are still using the USB 2.0 bus. Thunderbolt has been pretty enthusiastically embraced by the industry.