Cables for new set up

[krass]

I do occasionally experience the drop out of a few seconds of music,so I not for sure yet whether that is do to not stripping the mac mini as much as I can or could it also be a cable issue?

I think it's fair to say that choosing between different standard spec digital cables (from very cheap to very expensive) should not make any difference whatsoever with dropouts etc. I refer to cables of the same "standard", and not cables of different standards (USB3 vs USB2etc).
There are many who notice a difference in sound quality, but that's a quite different story to dropouts and data transmission problems.

Assuming you are using normal, standard cables then I strongly suspect your problem is not the cables.

I had problems with USB on my MacMini when streaming anything above 44k, looked like some buffering problem but I never managed to find the problem (tried different USB ports, disabling non-used ports etc etc). Now I use Win7 on my mini and the USB connection is fine..... (same cables !)