Technically speaking, it's possible for a cable to reduce sound quality and not just cut out. If you have a network stream with a codec like Opus and have packet loss in the cable, Opus can degrade gracefully and still deliver sound but at a lower quality. However, this basically only happens with online meetings over a spotty WiFi connection, so you don't need to worry about it.
USB is not like a network cable. It’s a totally different topology and should therefore only be used as a comparison in very limited use cases.
Most networking protocols will retransmit data if it doesn’t reach the other side (in case of TCP), and if bandwidth is not wide enough, the application layer can request a lower bitrate version.
Some streaming protocols use UDP because it has less overhead, so is mostly used for realtime video and audio streaming. Here, you’ll just miss data when a packet is dropped and the codec must try to fill in that gap somehow. Eventually that may lead to a selecting a lower bitrate version as well.
USB is more similar to UDP, in that it cannot retransmit missing audio data. The receiver can only check the integrity of the packet, and needs to drop it if it’s constrains errors. It however will not lower the connection speed in case of high BER (bit error rate). So a too long or bad cable may lead to dropouts or no sound at all. Lowering the sample rate manually may yield some improved results in some cases, but since the actual bitrate of the USB doesn’t change, this doesn’t always yield good results (you’ll just have more idle time).
As
@Basic Channel mentioned, the cable the OP uses, is an active cable, and this is basically mandatory when using USB lengths of more than 5 meters (~16ft). These devices either boost the signal (or use LVDS), or use an optical link to transmit data over longer distances and are therefor an excellent solution for these use cases.
