Comment by pixelpoet

If your YT/Winamp/whatever volume isn't at 100%, then what you're doing is:

1. generate audio signal

2. reduce volume of that signal, losing information because it's quantised

3. take that volume-reduced signal and boost it right back up again, but now with the lower bits destroyed

You can make this effect as bad as you like, e.g. turn it down to 1% and then amplify by 100x... but why?