Stevecham...Sound waves in air are truly analog. But contrary to what you suggest the sense of hearing is ultimately digital in nature. Neurons "fire", or "not"...a "one" or a "zero". The level of activity of a great number of neurons taken as a group conveys the analog information, just as does a digital data stream. Sorry about that. But who cares?
As the digital sampling rate and/or bit resolution gets better and better the difference between digital and anlog disappears. In over words the analog waveform reconstructed from the digital data stream exactly matches the original analog waveform. Isn't that what you want? Are we there yet? With 16bit/44Khz simple electrical measurement instruments clearly say no. The ears, with some ambiguity, also say no. IMHO, the situation is boaderline. With the present "high Resolutuion digital audio" 24 bit/96 KHz (or the SACD equivalent) we have probably reached to point of diminishing returns (not ideal perfection) with respect to waveform error resulting from the digital nature of the information. There are many other ways that the waveform can get distorted, having nothing to do with digital issues, and these mostly afflict analog information processing. Most of all, the analog loudspeaker that creates the sound waves which we hear is the dominant error source.
As the digital sampling rate and/or bit resolution gets better and better the difference between digital and anlog disappears. In over words the analog waveform reconstructed from the digital data stream exactly matches the original analog waveform. Isn't that what you want? Are we there yet? With 16bit/44Khz simple electrical measurement instruments clearly say no. The ears, with some ambiguity, also say no. IMHO, the situation is boaderline. With the present "high Resolutuion digital audio" 24 bit/96 KHz (or the SACD equivalent) we have probably reached to point of diminishing returns (not ideal perfection) with respect to waveform error resulting from the digital nature of the information. There are many other ways that the waveform can get distorted, having nothing to do with digital issues, and these mostly afflict analog information processing. Most of all, the analog loudspeaker that creates the sound waves which we hear is the dominant error source.