Happy Christmas!
There's a running argument on compaudio about USB cables which has many people all upset and cross for Christmas LOL. I have and will leave them to it but it's sad on so many levels. It sums up exactly why the HiFi industry is in the mess it is: Instead of striving for better amplifiers, DACs, speakers or - err -
music they are spending hundreds of $ chasing some pseudoscience and starting internet fights.
They also seem to be spending all their time listening to their USB cables, which is beyond sad.
It was bad enough with analog cables, but digital? The stupid goes soooooo deep.
I guess most have also have spent hundreds of $ on that final yard of mains flex to connect some shonky class B thing too, instead of the obvious move to Class A. There was even a small sub-topic fight about expensive audio fuses.... Jeez. However daft I think it can get it goes deeper.
MUCH deeper. people are even paying $thousands for mysterious black boxes and 8Hz resonators now:
https://highend-electronics.com/products/synergistic-research-black-box
https://highend-electronics.com/products/albat-cd-dac-tuning-chips
https://highend-electronics.com/products/acoustic-revive-rr-888
It seems all the money for Hifi which used to go into useful gear in the 1970s has been diverted into the huge 'Audio cables for idiots' market and as a result the remaining manufacturers of anything worthwhile eventually cave in and join the idiot market, following the sucker money.
This forum is a fresh breath of sanity in a mad world.
I suspect for headphone cables the resistance, inductance and capacitance will all affect the sound but not as much as the headphone amp or headphones. Silver is a tiny bit better at conducting than copper so for cables it makes no sense at all (i.e. just use slightly thicker copper), it only wins in transformers because you can make them smaller.
As for USB: Di Gi Tal. Ones and Zeros. Still the same even when transmitted by smoke signals.
If choice of USB cable really changes the sound then there is something wrong with the system (grounding or timing) and playing with the symptoms is about as useful as it sounds
.
BTW my USB cable is still a 2" long gender changer (thanks to the tips on this thread!) and is working fine, sounding exactly the same as the old £2 cable in fact, but tidier. I have found different artists and songs change the sound quite a bit though....
My next upgrade may be a DAC but TBH I quite like the sound of my system so it's only a future thought.