from what i understand in my home hobbyist vantage point.....
i thought that when recording a track, you'd want to get it as close to 0db as possible, without overloading your ad/da converters, in order to maximize signal to noise.
however, since when mixing together many multiple tracks....their volumes become additive, their overall individual volumes in the mix will wind up being reduced below 0db in practicality.
OTOH, since modern daws generally operate internally at 32bits, its impossible to overload internally....you just need to make sure you don't overload the final output levels that go back into the analog world.
maybe someone with better knowledge can help
