whart,
Very interesting post. I read about the floating shield cable design earlier in an article about a French audio writer named Jean Hiraga. This dates back to when Monster Cable was oversized zip cord and Interlink was coaxial…before the “balanced bandwidth” design was introduced, which I guess from your post was coincident with Bruce Brisson’s arrival there. Maybe Bruce read what I read, maybe he also took it further.
I also have heard it said that the open end should go to the component with the “lowest ground potential”, which can be determined by measurement , but your star ground discussion makes more sense…to me.