You cannot hear samples, or the "steps" between them. This is a silly idea that comes from people seeing pictures of the waveform as it is digitally captured an

You cannot hear samples, or the "steps" between them. This is a silly idea that comes from people seeing pictures of the waveform as it is digitally captured and imagining they can hear it. You cannot, it is impossible. Even with an unrealistically low sample rate (say 500Hz instead of 44.1kH), this will not sound like 500 beats per second as the "steps" occur, but rather will just sound extraordinarily dull, as the Nyquist frequency has dropped to 1kHz, a fairly low tone, and all info above that has been lowpassed away. When the signal is changed to analog by the DAC in order to come out of a speaker, the "steps" become smooth curves like any analog waveform. You cannot hear "digital steps" because they cannot be audible - sound is vibration, and it cannot be made into steps in the analog realm.