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Buffering

Tony, do you understand the concept of data buffering?

Example 1: I download an audio file from the internet. The data goes through all kinds of twists and turns on its way to my browser software, which buffers this data (usually in pieces, because there is no reason to buffer an entire audio file before transmitting it) and writes it to my hard drive. Does all the "jitter" involved in the data transmission matter?

Example 2: I send audio data from my computer to an external DAC. It goes through all kinds of twists and turns inside my computer as the playback software reads it from the hard drive, buffers it, sends it to the OS's audio support library, which then sends it out via a protocol such as USB to my external audio device. The external audio device then buffers this data, because it does not want to rely on the timing with which the data arrives from the computer, and plays it back from its local buffer based on a local clock. Does the "jitter" involved in reading the audio data from the hard drive, transferring it to the OS, and then the OS transferring it to the DAC via USB matter if the external device has zero dependency on the timing with which the data arrives in its buffer (assuming there is no buffer underrun or overrun, which can be controlled via USB protocol, much like a hard drive will not let the OS send data so quickly to it that it can't keep up when physically writing it to the disk)?

If so, please explain why this external DAC, which is buffering the data and therefore has no dependency on the "jitter" of the incoming data, and which is controlling data transfer from the transport (the computer) so as to prevent buffer overruns and underruns, has any dependency whatsoever on the machinations of the transport (and why this case of transport feeding DAC is different from the case of internet feeding storage hard drive).

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