For many many years i have ripped my CDs (over a thousand) to Apple Lossless (ALAC) and i use volume normalize ebu r128 during the ripping. I realize this is "destructive" but it enables me to listen to my music in shuffle mode which is what i do 95% of the time, so for me, it accomplishes want i want. I have the physical CDs as archives in case i ever want to do something different.

however, recently, i've been buying digital files from hdtracks, 7digital, bandcamp, etc. i always save the original files as downloaded so i have an archive. My DAC can handle up to 96/24 but my iPod classic can only go up to 48/16. This means that in order to play my files on both devices i need my files to be 48/16 or 44/16. This means using dbpoweramp music converter to make these changes.

in the conversion process from the original digital file to ALAC at 48/16 the DSP settings i use are in this order:

Resample to 48000 (unless the original files is 44100)
Volume Normalization to r128
Bit Depth to 16 using triangular dither

my questions: is this the best order to achieve maximum fidelity? Should i set bit depth to 32 as the first step before the other DSP effects? Any suggestion for a better method? Should i volume normalize as i am now or should that be the final step after changing the bit depth to 16?