Mark,

You are seriously confused about the transmission of digital data. This idea that you have of “decouple the PC from the audio system to avoid PC power supply induced nastiness and conductive noise through the interconnects” is complete garbage. Also “physically decoupled and so transmits no noise” is complete garbage.

I am sorry to come across as combative.

This hokus pokus is common in analogue audio and wine tasting. But just does not have any place in digital audio. You simply have no idea what you are talking about. You are simply making this stuff up!

It is not that complicated, if all of the bits are getting from the source to the destination then all the bits are transmitted perfectly. There is no room for argument, done, zilch, end of discussion. There is no room for the hokus pokus anymore. That is why we pay up for a digital audio system, so we can listen and not be bothered by hokus pokus.