Please Educate Me

Mapman +1

paul6001,  The essence of your post was not lost on me.  While a full answer to your question can be long and drawn out as many in this post would like it to be.  The correct answer is that the digital representation of an acoustic signal is the same regardless of the type of playback system used.  That said, there are several formats to generate the digital word and each format has a method for extracting or converting the word back to audible sound.  The most poplar method has been the system used to make CD's.   We also have SACD and other high sampling rate methods that produce a better representation of the sound.  Generally speaking the more data or gamut the better the sound.  Converting the word to music and playing it though electronics is another question altogether and is better left for another conversation.  Thanks for your post.  Larry 

Paul6001
It's a shame that the immediate response to your question was snark, but I'd like to think this is more a reflection of the times rather than our community.  However, just like other forms of social media it pays to consider your words and choose them carefully.  Also like other forms of social media, you shouldn't take it too seriously. 

I think a few of the posters here have hinted at why ones and zeroes in audio are not the same as ones and zeroes in other types of digital files or processes.  Your original post suggested it as well.  You said timing and flutter but I think you meant timing and jitter.  Jitter is errors in timing that cause distortion.  A music file may be ones and zeroes but that is only until you begin to play it back.  What was previously just data now has to be precisely reproduced not just in terms of the sounds those ones and zeroes represent, but accurately in terms of timing as well.  This is not that easy to, at least not well, and is likely what accounts for the biggest differences in the sound quality of one DAC vs another.  Any part of the signal chain that disrupts that timing hurts the quality of the reproduced signal.  Despite variations from human to human, our ability to hear is pretty amazing and when we hear reproduced music, with even very small timing errors we can tell and it doesn't sound as good as it should.  So yes, all the bits and pieces in your reproduction chain matter, disc players, and cables, etc., but I believe that this is the fundamental reason that digital sounds different than analog.  Analog is subject to other kinds of distortion, but that's a different topic. 

One of the ways audio technology has advanced to deal with this issue is sampling rates.  A sampling rate of 192,000 per second is better that a rate of 44,100 times per second because you're dealing with a much smaller slice of time and these slices represent finer gradations of the signal.  As if your picture had more pixels. 

Now imagine a pure sine wave and just one second's worth -divided into 192,000 slices.  Each slice is like a step in the shape of the that wave.  More slices gives you more resolution and a better, more accurate facsimile of that original sound, but you're still chopping up what was once a continuous wave and reassembling it. 
Oh, and now imagine it's not a pure tone, represented by a perfect sine wave but a complex mash up of instruments, voices, hall ambiance, etc.  You get the idea.  Like my father used to say, "timing is everything." 

Music represents a very complex kind of information.  Reproducing it with the hope of making it sound like the real thing is tough.  It's a modern wonder that digital music works at all and that so many of us hardnosed audiophiles are happy with it.  I'm sure there are plenty of folks here who can do a better and more accurate job of explaining this than me.  I struggled with this too, but someone explained digital audio to me this way once and it was the first time I felt like I was getting a handle on it.  I hope this helps to answer your question.  Just for the record I listen to BOTH kinds.  Regular and extra crispy. 

BTW I leave my equipment on all the time unless it's storming or I'm on vacation.  I know it's a waste of energy but it seems like such a small indulgence...
And welcome to the club.  You're not really an audiophile unless you've been attacked in a forum. 

C

@woofman - Hard nosed audiophiles are not happy with digital music. You might say serious audiophiles aren’t, but that would cause a heated argument. 

MS Word remains digital when we see and use it, whereupon music ends up analog.  No digital speakers out there that I'm aware of. If there were, they'd still have to move air, so different materials, masses, enclosures,  room characteristics,  etc, etc, will affect sound.

Sorry for the overly critical and angry replies. There's plenty of good experience and advice here...if you don't mind wading through the flaming trolls.

Remember: There is no spoon. :)