General Question about 41.1 and 48 on one machine

Hi everyone,



just a technical question out of interest.

Maybe someone can clear this up.



I'm currently running a ProTools 10 Session on a Mac for postproduction at 48khz, outputting via an Mbox2 (Sync=internal)

At the very same time I can play songs and streams in iTunes that definitely run at 44.1kHz.

There seems to be no interference between both sample rates, which means they seem to work independently from each other.

I've been testing this with a 1kHz sine Tone exported at 44.1 and 48. No matter where I play them, the pitch of every possible playback scenario is always correct, and there are no timestretch artifacts audible whatsoever.



Switching the Mbox's sample-rate in the Audio/MIDI Setup has no discernible effect on iTunes at all.. but surprisingly does change the playback speed and pitch of the ProTools session..



I'm not unhappy about it, but: IS IT TRUE? AND HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE?



I figured there can only be ONE sample-rate set in ONE audio-interface at the SAME time???



Anyone with profound technical knowledge can explain or confirm this? I found nothin on the internet about it.



Cheers



Nick