Thanks for the link. I like it.
There are four transfer modes: control, interrupt, bulk, and isochronous. It seems that bulk transfer (as long as the buffer is large) is the way to go.
Interrupt and bulk data transfers conclude with a handshake packet to provide confirmation that the data was received, or request that it be re-sent if it was not. Delivery of this data is therefore guaranteed, even if the time taken to deliver it is not.
But there is no guaranteed access to the bus in bulk trasfer mode. If you want guaranteed access to the bus, then you must use isochronous mod.
"With isochronous data it is not possible to retry a failed transaction. Since only one slot is allocated to the pipe during each frame, resending the data would delay transmission of the succeeding data samples, upsetting the time element of the data delivery. Consequently no handshake packet is sent and the data must be accepted as is.
Bulk mode can be used for a dedicated music server because the bus is free. But isochronous mode is required for computers. Question is, do you have a choice? If not, you have to accept the default mode of the DAC, which is likely isochronous.
The answer to the question are bit errors recovered? and therefore "do cables matter?" is it depends on the transfer mode.