DCAs are not routed – so they don’t get any eq/fx/delay/sends of their own (that’s fine for your stated needs).
They are a remote control for the other faders, the two gains are summed (so -inf on either DCA or channel is -inf, 0 on both is 0. If you have a mix of instruments at -10->5 dB with the DCA at 0 then you can adjust them all (I.e to drop them under vocals) by dropping the DCA 5dB… that will be as if you had the instruments at between -15 and 0. Magic 😉
The ‘dangers’ are:
– muting or dropping the DCA and forgetting about it!
– The DCA can’t take a channel fader to more than 10dB, so a channel fader over unity won’t go quite as high if you stomp the DCA to +10. That’s a pretty minor issue though…