I have been playing around for the last hour and I'm happy to report that I now have noise!
I went back to a cheap set of ic's and plugged the SB3 into a regular outlet that isn't running off a dedicated breaker and I now have analog line noise. Not White noise that is mentioned in the links above but subtle, noticeable line noise.
Funny part is that in my system it's all power related. I swapped ic's a few times and the noise was still there. I plugged the SB3 into a dedicated outlet and although better, it was still audible although I must admit that I had to max out the volume on my pre to hear it. Then I brought my Equi=Tech back into the mix and the SB3 is once again dead quite. This leads me to believe that based on my own system that the SB3 is picking up internal ac noise and passing it to the analog outputs. When I tried the above using the just the digital out, it didn't matter what I did, there was no noise.
This is going to sound like a plug given my recent partnership with Equi=Tech but I'm going to say it anyway, the Equi=Tech is doing what it should and is filtering out the line noise that the SB3 is passing along the chain. This to me at least is a great example of balanced power at work.
If I had to pass fault, I would blame the SB3 for not having the proper shielding on the analog side. To me at least this isn't a big deal as in order for me to hear this noise I had to crank the volume on my pre to an insane level and if I was listening to something, I would never know it was there. It's also an easy fix. I know a few of the folks at Logitech and will pass along my findings. A few pennies worth of the proper isolation material and this problem is gone.....all without having to have the SB3 modded.