Thank you so much for your response.
You are totally right that 64bit will preserve the audio quality. What I am talking about here are two plugins with very specific uses. If I want to use these plugins, I have to have Volume Leveling, and Peak Level Normalize turned off. The first plugin was a dynamic range restoration plugin. It was created to fix heavily limited, clipped audio, like much of pop music. I found it performs far better when the signal is approaching 0dbfs, its made for very hot masters. I use its internal output gain to drop it down by 4db and give room for the restored signal.
The second plug in was a loudness meter. It gives me a variety of scopes into what exactly the audio is doing. Once again, this one wants to be absolutely first in the chain (so I can see what the original master is doing), or absolutely last in the chain (so I can see what I am doing to the signal overall).
Both of those plugins work great in Media Center with Volume Leveling, and Peak Level Normalize turned off. It it only when I play a playlist or shuffle, that I want to have Volume Leveling turned back on. Ideally I would do metering first, then dynamic range "fixing", then volume leveling (for track to track consistency), then any eq or spatilization or other VSTs.
I think Volume Leveling works great for playlists, it also drops the overall level closer to Netflix or other video content. Leading to a far more relaxed audio experience (without sudden jumps between music mastered to -6dbfs and movies at -18dbfs).
