innuos pulse compared to denafrips gaia 12th

I'd easily choose the Pulse over Gaia with computer as streamer. Next to the dac, streamer is most important streaming component. Using a general purpose computer as streamer means high levels of self generated noise, poor clocking, and once you've lost here nothing post streamer can restore whats been lost, it also defeats the whole purpose of a DDC in that optimization of INPUT to any DDC is also critically important.  Inserting a high end DDC is only worthwhile if one already has nice streamer, optimized input (most likely usb) into that DDC and DAC with I2S input.

If you insist on I2S output not too many, most will use usb out of their streamer into a DDC in order to use I2S, this what you'd do with Pulse. As for streamers with I2S just off the top of my head Holo Red is reportedly very nice.

audioman58 is the Denafrips guy to talk to. Downloading Windows drivers is a rather simple process, foolproof, very little chance of bricking your computer. I've downloaded plenty of drivers over the years on Windows computers, no big deal even for a complete novice.

I'd bet on this being a tariff issue, if unit needs to be shipped back to Asia they gonna be responsible for paying that. Can't you ship to Audioman58, I'm sure he's familiar with process.