Analogue clipping from digital sources

but phono stages have additional gain just for them.  It's true that you almost don't need any gain for CD's, but tape decks and tuners were often near that, no? 

@erik_squires No. quite often a tuner or phono section will make 1Volt. A cassette machine makes 1 Volt (@ 0VU), as do consumer (not pro) reel to reels (also @ 0VU).

Also, Ralph is right for an AMP, 2V might be overload but preamps have been 100% aware of the CD standard since then and are built for it, so I disagree.

@erik_squires FWIW the high output digital problem is one of the issues that any preamp manufacturer has to find a way to deal with. With a phono section or tuner, you might need 15dB of gain to work with most power amps, but you (most of the time) don't need any for digital.

We've been lucky in that our patented direct-coupled output section of our preamps is neutral enough and is able to prevent coloration from the interconnect that there is still a benefit using our preamps with a digital source.