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Your DAW doesn't care about attenuation...you will not hear any loss in a modern-day DAW with even 800db of gain or attenuation.
No, seriously.
So your gain staging issues come down to your preamp vs. your converter, and anything else in-between.
Generally your AD converter is totally fine up to at least -6dbFS peak, and often past -1dbFS peak. Also, most high-quality converters have about 30db less noise than most preamps. So you can feel at ease getting your preamp to sound the way you want it without having to worry much about what the converter thinks.
And don't worry at all about what the DAW thinks. You may have plugins that the programmer has, for some often inexplicable reason, decided to make hard-clip at 0dbR, or to saturate as it nears that point, which you might not like the collective effects of. But the programmer thinks he is trying to help you out (maybe...or maybe he's just a dope). Nonetheless you are free to gain stage however you want ITB with no concern whatsoever about loss from gain itself.
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