We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes

I do not understand your post and believe your conclusion false.  You have attempted to use syllogistic deductive reasoning.  Let me attempt to explain where this fails.  Please forgive in advance my philosophical pontification for I am a product of my Jesuit Fordham University education with its mandatory philosophy/theology core for a BS degree.  

Your major premise is that digital systems transmit and process nothing less and nothing more than packets packets of ones and zeroes .  You seek agreement.  We all can agree by deductive reasoning this is correct.  

Your minor premise is that these digital packets successfully travel thousands of miles through AWS' digital sewer, only to arrive in our homes completely unscathed ones and zeroes.  Facts prove this premise false.  The transmission of digital data over the WWW introduces a number of errors that cause distortion including, without limitation:

1. Jitter, the distortion we are all most familiar with. ​​​​​​
2. Transmission impairments: signal distortion, attenuation
3. Noise:  From EMI which includes RFI, introduced during transmission. A 

Your syllogistic conclusion is that therefore, this demonstrates that digital transmission protocols just work flawlessly .   Based on the data, this is false. If the protocols were flawless the errors causing distortion would not be present. Removing these errors is feasible but not practical due to cost.  

The correct conclusion by deductive reasoning is that the design of the transmission protocol and systems are adequate because even though errors, are introduced, these errors can be adequately corrected or removed  during processing and conversion of the digital stream to an analog signal.by the design of the DAC.  This seems to be the future discussion you indicated we should progress to.  Good sound quality goes even further than the processing of the ones and zeros to an analog signal.  The design of the DAC’s analog output stage is the most critical subsystem that impacts sound quality.  
 
 

@jeffbij I never said sequence of ones and zeros were corrupted.  I said the signal is has errors including jitter, transmission impairments, and EMI.  None of these involve a corrupted sequence, additional or absent digits or sequences.   We are arguing the over semantics regarding the use of the term unscathed.   It is unscathed with regard to the accuracy of the digital sequencing based on the TCPIP protocol but scathed in its timing and signal quality.  

@devinplombier  Thank you. However, as I explained in a later post, I believe I was unclear and misunderstood, for I never said the streaming ITCP protocol assure transmission of anything less than bit perfect files.  I said it is not “unscathed” from an audiophile perspective in that the transmission to conversion process introduces timing errors, transmission impairments, and EMI noise. @kennyc stated it more eloquently than I … The digital data rides on an analog signal that can pick up noise.  High-end computing ≠ High-end audio where we care how it “sounds”.   Therefore, I apologize if my conclusion was unclear.  Restated, is is that audio files are transmitted bit perfect but not unscathed from factors degrade sound quality and it is the design intent of the DAC to correct or limit these factors to improve sound quality.  I also concluded it is not the DAC conversion stage but the analogue output stage that is critical to sound quality.