@soix I actually just swapped the HDMI cable back to the old one in the middle of a song, and then back again to see. While the baseline change with just the USB was an improvement, the HDMI cable seems to make the biggest improvement here.
The USB changed alone sounds a bit tighter to me, with moderate improvements in the soundstage, imaging, etc over the old cables, but swapping out the HDMI really made it come alive. Whether it's due to the shorter HDMI cable length or cable quality or a combination of both, who knows, but that seems to be the majority of the improvement.
However, I can't really easily swap the USB back to the old one (it's ziptied up now since I'm a bit obsessive with cable management, so I can't really tell if the HDMI on its own makes the biggest improvement or if it really needs to be in combination.
Either way, now it all comes quite close to the sound from my much pricier vinyl setup. Not 100% there, but I did not expect that at this price point. Would probably need to step up in DAC & Streamer (zenith + terminator II+ maybe) to get much closer, at like 5x the cost. Very pleased!
Of course, it also comes down to the quality of the recordings and files ultimately. Some recordings just don't sound great digitally for one reason or another.