Does USB cable quality matters (affects in someway the signal) on audio interface (or DAC)?
It's worth having a USB cable with ferrite 'stoppers' on it, to attenuate conducted emissions along the cable. This will reduce the chance of hash from the switch mode power supply and other PC generated interference 'getting into' the audio circuits of the ADC that's doing the recording. With an electrically noisy PC, and a cheap ADC, a cable without stoppers might produce breakthrough interference on audio. However, part of the cost of a good ADC should be high immunity to conducted interference.
The ferrite stoppers add a few pence (cents) to the cost of a cable, and most cables I've seen have them (the cylindrical lump close to the connector at one or both ends of the cable), only the very cheapest cables do not.
Once a cable has these stoppers, all cables either work, or are broken, there are no differences in data quality. If it can transfer a file, then it can transfer your highest quality recording. Golden ears cannot tell the difference between two identical files.
I wish I could dream up snake oil like expensive 'audio grade' USB cables and sell them for a fortune to audiophools, but I'm just an honest engineer!
As USB is a digital signal, no, interference will not cause the audio to change. But USB audio is normally delivered via isochronous data transfer (think UDP), a best effort non-error correction protocol. USB uses Manchester encoding on differential twisted paired data lines to reduce the effect of any interference, as well as the shielding. USB does have error checking (CRC) for transmissions, but as the audio is real time transfers, any corrupted packet is simply dropped/ignored.
You would hear audio drops if enough interference happens on the line, but no static or similar analog noise. Normal interference shouldn't affect it much if at all.
A sufficiently sub-par or damage cable may drop too many packets, or cause the line to drop to a lower speed, to make it usable. The same cable for bulk transfers, like copying a file from a hard drive, may result in corrupt transfers or transfers that take much longer than normal.
I am new here so was unable to comment on Neil_UK's post above, but wanted to share my experience for others who may be experiencing noise with their USB audio interface. Using my audio interface (Soundcraft 22 MTK) I had been experiencing quite alot of noise and had tried a number of things to fix it like changing power management settings in Windows, plugging into different USB ports, using different USB cables (none of them had a ferrite choke/stopper on them though).
Fast forward to today and after a bit of googling a stumbled across this thread. I found I had a USB cable that has (only) one ferrite choke on it which I hadn't tried yet (and slightly shorter than others I had tried) and gave it a go.
The results were absolutely astounding - I can no longer hear any of that noise through my speakers, all I hear is the audio itself.
So it could be coincidence that all the other USB cables I tried were faulty, or more likely it's the ferrite choke that has fixed it like Neil_UK recommended. I'd like to thank Neil_UK because if it wasn't for his post I would not have tried the cable. My advice to everyone with the same issue is there would be no harm trying a USB cable with ferrite chokes on it. Has anyone else has the same success with these?
To give you an idea of how bad it sounded before - think of listening to some music but you have the window open and can hear quite alot of traffic and City noises in the background. Now it sounds like I'm in a soundproofed studio in comparison, very happy