I too purchased and followed the CA article. Curious how you like it and whether it’s currently your choice to feed the DS. I was pleasantly surprised how good it sounds - I use jriver and via DLNA send everything to the BBB transcoded to wav (even DSD/DOP, which correctly decodes as DSD on the DS).
I read somewhere that the BBB’s 5V line on the usb port was heavily regulated/filterered - maybe that’s part of its charm.
Perhaps. One way to sort things out is to pull the ± contacts from a USB cable and compare the sound btw different sources with that cable.
I’m not a fan of DLNA style user interfaces so I just use the Bridge I and II and now the BBB for testing. As such I haven’t done diddly squat for optimizing the sound from them so I hesitate to give audio quality judgements. Still it works fine for me and for the price it’s a bargain. A linear 5V supply should make a difference in the sound, but first you should just experiment with where you plug the wall wart power supply in.