Bevan,
To reiterate my point,
Its not JUST the connection at the receiver or source, its the connection of the Gold to the substrate metal on the connector.
Fiber optic in my home environment suffers little from external problems.
As far as music is concerned, it has a variable amount of data, and the processor at any point can be challenged to reproduce fidrlity. The processor interpolates ( Kinda ) values beyond 16 bit resolution. COmputer data is packed ( unless compressed) in a constant manor( aside from any other packing software). Music is bandwidth variable. Different beasts. DVD id the same. Look at a DVPS 7000 display. It can go from less then 1 mbs to 10mbs.