I don't think this is true in practice anymore. Given that most sources are 16 bit wide, and afaik most OSes internally use 24 bits these days in the OS mixer (at least my laptop does), the information loss is negligible (just some rounding errors and that's it).
I'd be much more worried about 44.1khz sources being resampled to 48khz if that's the OS playback rate. I mean you won't be able to hear that either in practice but at least it's not negligible.
I'd be much more worried about 44.1khz sources being resampled to 48khz if that's the OS playback rate. I mean you won't be able to hear that either in practice but at least it's not negligible.