I bought a USB to USB-B cable at Radio Shack last year that has gold connectors and have been using to play my downloads.
Recently discovered I already had a cable, apparently included with something I bought, and it's twice as thick, but also twice as long, and has non-gold connectors.
Which would you think is better, and would have less jitter?
Here's the bottom line with digital signal cables. (And USB cables carry digital signals only.)
Regarding errors from poor or broken connections - it's either working or not. On or off.
A poor error riddled connection can work intermittently and the computer will try to deal with resulting errors and/or buffer underruns as best it can. But if you have a good enough connection and any noise picked up that is far enough below the signal level - the ones and zeros still come out ones and zeros on the other end.
Here's the point:
If you EVER see an advertisement for a digital signal cable with talk about subtle signal degradation issues associated with analog signals - it's flat out BS. No exceptions! Digital cables do NOT carry analog signals.
You want a quality cable that doesn't break. No more. No less.
A thicker cable can be a better made cable and hold up to handling and use longer.
If both the thicker cable and the thinner cable are working correctly there will be no difference in performance.
Anyone trying to tell you that some aspect of the analog signal is improved by different wire in a digital cable is either grossly misinformed on how the system works or (more likely) a snake oil salesman.
The whole point of digital is to reduce everything to be represented by strings of ones and zeros. Then when the circuits (built from analog components) see .9V or .8V on the other end instead of a perfect 1V, it's still interpreted as 1V. (And of course a .1V or .2V level = 0) Only when the connection gets bad enough that everything comes back as .5V does the system break down and fail.
If the digital signal makes it from one end to the other without error - you have 100% perfect success!
If it doesn't, you will either get an error message or very obvious dropout errors in the audio stream.
Now, errors like this CAN be difficult to troubleshoot at times with fast modern computers. They can detect errors and try multiple times to send data. If this happens quickly enough, you can have success with a partially broken cable and be none the wiser. Or just get the occasional crash that's hard to pin down immediately.
But if the digital audio gets through, there will never be analog domain effects like subdued highs or dynamic transients and so forth.
Buy quality cables so they don't just break.
If you see advertising touting analog domain concerns - they're intentionally lying and selling BS (and probably a cheaply made cable to boot).