Earlier I asked about Blue Cat Audio and was turned on to their free suite, which includes a Gain plugin. Have it now.
M. Senior advises that a DAW's Volume Fader is best left near unity and that a track strip's Gain knob is underutilized. I do use the Gain knobs in Sonar, but I've also inserted a compressor before, like the PC4K, set the parameters to 'null' and adjusted makeup gain + or - as needed.
Most of the time I'm automating volume on an imported audio track. Let's assume I start by first setting the Volume Fader to -5db for that track in the mix, only to find afterwards that I need more or less overall output from that automated track. Once automated, the Volume Fader is well, automated, and I found it convenient to just grab a compressor.
Good, bad, right, wrong, common? Can a Compressor work as a Gain plugin?