Your comments regarding alac are agreed Nik.
It seems Jack has his W7 sound system controlled by a Realtek device driver which was set to output 24/48 by default, so bit word-length and sample rate translation will be operating on all songs which are not in that format, and 'bit-perfect' transmission will be lost.
This is nothing to do with iTunes, nor digital volume control, but is simply due to the design and configuration of his computer, and the operating system.
Probably he could alter it if he wished to do so, but he seems happy with the sound it makes, and why not ? - I doubt he would hear much difference if he did.
On a W7 system, digital volume control is doing nothing compared to the translations his Realtek driver is doing.
JC.
It seems Jack has his W7 sound system controlled by a Realtek device driver which was set to output 24/48 by default, so bit word-length and sample rate translation will be operating on all songs which are not in that format, and 'bit-perfect' transmission will be lost.
This is nothing to do with iTunes, nor digital volume control, but is simply due to the design and configuration of his computer, and the operating system.
Probably he could alter it if he wished to do so, but he seems happy with the sound it makes, and why not ? - I doubt he would hear much difference if he did.
On a W7 system, digital volume control is doing nothing compared to the translations his Realtek driver is doing.
JC.