I can see you're growing as tired of this as I am, so I'll make this brief.

Geoff Wood wrote:

dB is a relative term, and by itself means nothing.

Correct.

dBFS is decibels relative to a real figure, relating to the analogue level
represented by a digital word at "all 1's".

Relative to the analogue levels of "all bits on" which is
1111111111111111 or 111111111111111111111111
depending on whether you're using 16-bit or 24-bit resolution.
No problem there.

I think my last question at this time, then, is this:

If the WAV of a sine wave was normalized (i.e. maximum peak just below
0dB, no clipping) and the "level" of that WAV was -12dBFS, would the
bisector (i.e. the average level) of the sine wave be located 12
decibels below 0dB?

Myke