Alpine how is that any different from what you'd experience if you scoped your gains? You do it the same way and will run into the same issue. Remember the whole goal no matter what you choose is to present the optimal clean signal to your amps. Voltage drop and things like that are going to cause the same issues no matter how you first set your gain. It all comes back to knowing your equipment and its limits. There is no fool proof method for not blowing things up. Its all about a good starting point. if you start with a jacked up gain clipped to hell and back you are going to find that to be a problem a lot faster.