Everything Matters With Digital

IMO, the only thing that matters in digital is what you can hear. 

Spectrum. If it's digital in and digital out why do you have a modem?

djones51

If it’s digital in and digital out why do you have a modem?

C’mon, are you really claiming that your ISP provides you with an analog signal? I suppose it’s possible, but it’s difficult to believe.

Modem = 𝗠𝗼dulate𝗗𝗲𝗺odulate.
My cable modem (Netgear CM500) takes a digital cable input and outputs it in a proper format for the router. There’s nothing analog about any of it.

veerossi is correct. There are big audible differences in digital cables. I have several and changing just the digital cable makes the sytem sound very different.

The QAM is sent in an analog carrier wave which is where your MOdualteDEModulate comes in. Yes my ISP is sending me an analog signal which my Modem will modulate to digital that can be read by my network.  Yours might be different if you don't use a DOCSIS based system. 

QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) signals are comprised of sine waves with varying amplitude and phase shifts, which means even though we call them digital signals, they are actual analog signals carrying digital data.