Apple lossless (M4A) shows as 32 bit on 24 bit encoding

[Miss Sissy Princess]

In the MPD User's Manual under Audio Format Settings, one finds this sentence

The following values are valid for bits: 8 (signed 8 bit integer samples), 16, 24 (signed 24 bit integer samples padded to 32 bit), 32 (signed 32 bit integer samples), f (32 bit floating point, -1.0 to 1.0), dsd means DSD (Direct Stream Digital).

I grant that this is in a narrative about the output format setting, but I wonder if somewhere in the chain, the 24-bit ALAC content is getting padded before ffmpeg tests it. 

Regards,
Kent

Interesting find.  Thanks.  

To be clear, the badges show up with nothing playing -- on each album (art) displayed in the Window.  I checked the sample that I provided to Tim for his analysis and it's properly shown as 24/192 in Music (Apple's own player), Colibri, Decibel, foobar2000, and Vox.  It also shows as 24/192 in Invisor Lite.  (Note that the preceeding are all Mac Apps -- at least in the forms that I tried them).