It’s about implementation and total gain structure of your system .
In practice a digital volume might perform better and as tony said for typical content your -48dB down before anything significant happen .
And digital volume has perfect channel balance and no wear and tear of potentiometers.
I think RME as pro manufacturer has a hybrid system with some coarse steps in the analog circuit and then digital volume . Most likely to accommodate a vide range of system gain.
So in practice in a setup without traditional power amp ( with a DAC with volume control as source for example ) you set your power amp gain as low as possible to be able to crank up the digital volume pretty high for your normal listening level . Or use analog inline attenuators before the amp if it does not have selectable gain.
Rant:
Gain everywhere !
Traditionaly we alway had to much gain in our amps due to some legacy sources before CD joe blows old vhs who only gives 0.1 volt output or something.
So many amps and preamps have to much gain . Heck I even saw a test where the tested a Rotel pre and power amp combo where the pre amp gain was ridiculous compared to the needs of the “matched” power amp who already have quite a lot of gain resulting in that the tester only being able to use the first not so linear part of the volume pot.
If you ever wondered why you can only use a third of the volume put or less in some of systems it’s because everyone is hedging their bets and provides enough gain for the most decrepit old source component playing a very quiet classic lute composition
this later morphed to need to not appear “weak” and your products must go to “11” and be loud with just a slight turn on the volume knob, a surprisingly lot of people associate the position of the volume knob with how powerful the product is