Does iTunes have peak protection? And QuickTime? Options

[Jplus]

Something I was just wondering about... I learnt to never put the volume to the maximum, because the signal may be capped which sounds bad and may potentially damage your speakers. However, I discovered that VLC has a setting that says "enable peak protection", meaning that you can safely put the volume to 100% without fear of capping.

Now that I know about it it makes a lot of sense to me that a decent audio player would offer such a feature. That makes me think that iTunes and QuickTime probably do it too, but without telling the user about it. Could anyone confirm that? Sofar I've been unable to find any conclusive answer on the internet. If I knew for sure that I can safely max out the volume in iTunes I'd find that very convenient.

As an aside, is there any disadvantage to peak protection?

[Jplus]

Thanks folks.

So I guess that means 1) that peak protection isn't doing anything useful for me in VLC because I don't add gain beyond 100% and 2) I can safely put the volume to 100% in iTunes and QuickTime.

Still one question. I have 2.1 speakers connected to my computer by minijack. The cable is routed through the subwoofer box before it splits to the tweeters, and since the set is able to produce a lot of volume I presume some power amplification is done in the subwoofer box. It's sold as a set so I assume the power rating of the speakers is tuned to the power rating of the amp. I usually put the volume of the speakers much lower than it can go so for with music with little or no distortion it should be safe. But what about less reliable sources of music such as YouTube?

As for the headphones, I'm always very careful with those.