Thanks for your detailed reply Peter!
So do you advocate just a pure 2 channel approach or do you also play multi-channel tracks as well?
Also, it seems to me HDMI provides the only directly way of moving the digital signal from the PC to the receiver -I am using a Pioneer SC-27 which replaced a whole bunch of separate amps and preamps with a really clean nice sound for my listening room. I was at CES this year and a rep showed my a 2 channel amp chip that produces 75 watts per channel and has been a-b against huge tube amps and won or tied most of the time in listening tests.
So I guess if this is all about zillion dollar cables and huge tube amps then I will have to pass.
And yes I used KS and found it worked well except for switching between 2 and multi-channel tracks.