My suspicion on your probable end result
a) the Emotiva and the Oppo are physical transport solutions and as such cannot give you the highest resolution with either their built in DAC or the Yggdrassil. Think of them as equivalent to a basic Rega turntable for transport section. The Oppo also includes a streaming option, its nice sounding but not that much better than the CD transport.
b) Samsung cable box- no experience with it but these devices rarely have good electrical isolation and aren't "hardened" to prevent output jitter.
c) Gateway NV79 laptop, appears to be 2010 vintage. PC laptops suffer the same issues as the cable boxes.
So net of all this is if you kept the Yggdrassil, hopefully you concluded a made to purpose music server or streamer was lacking to get you the fullest enjoyment of your purchase. Else I suspect the Oppo ended up being your solution of preference.