i have a fairly basic daw tech question

[2_nice]

in a program like sonar neundo cubase logic pro tools etc. yo have two different controls i.e gain and level
i am wondering if, if the gain is clipping on the level of the track (which is always bad digital distortion not good) but then a comp plugin or a eq plugin changes the volume of the sound and it isn't clipping on the way out of the effects bin if this is all good as far as digital distortion (i.e having a whole song with dynamic at (using a ration type analogy to describe the mixing situation) 9 and a short section at 10 to maintain the high dynamic ration of the 9 section have the whole peices gain coming through from the from the gain section (where it is just under clipping going to the effects bin (with a compressor set with high ration high threshold in the bin) will the sound suffer from digital distortion at 10 or will the plugin work as a peak stop type limiter in the same way it would work in the analog domain and stop overs

 

[bigdmakintrax]

main thing I have learned and from trial and error...is not to record hot....I like to have a nice graph to see the signal and usually if I record I never let it get in the red....or say around -6 depending on the scale you use on VU....never let it get to 0....thats gonna be very hot.....I usually record at a reasonably nice level....then apply my normalizing and other effects aftwards...also using my ear and panning things where they should go........I found from going to actual studios with my tracks over time and having mcs record that the engineer have made comments about the tracks being hot.....not hot as in gonna make a lot of loot but hot as in approaching 0 closely or exceeding it.... or leaving very little room for any tweaking that might be done in the studio...so I learned to just record the tracks leaving a nice buffer between 0 and the visual peak on the VU and using my scale.....