Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

What I'm picturing happening with streamming transports, jitter and interference pre-dac, and this is not based on any technical experience whatsoever - just trying to piece together all the contradicting arguments I keep reading on the subject is this: Audible interference and distortion is at the extreme end of the spectrum and is not really to be tolerated. Beneath that, the small little details - the decay of a piano note, the room reverb in a recording, those subtle nuances that transform listening from just hearing music to the experience we're in this for, they're the bits getting lost from source along the way by the miniscule timing errors and uncorrected dropped data. The effect is probably small compared to what gets lost in the DAC and in the speakers, but it's a contribution. I may have totally misunderstood the theory, but I have compared digital sources in an otherwise identical system and they sound different, so IME the argument that anything pre-dac can't make a difference doesnt hold up. I'm not going to publish a peer-reviewed paper in Your Mum about it but I've heard it.