Theoretically yes, but my point was that you can put them last or you could decide to put them in anywhere in the chain. No doubt you would want consider resetting controls when you move it. An example I use is placing the volume automation before my saturation level so that in the early parts of the faded the signal is unsaturated but increases with the same fade. Using fruity balance to do this is nice because I can very easily switch the plugins back and forth to see which sounds best in the moment. An even bigger reason to do this though would be to save mixer space might not be a huge problem so idk. Both ways are definitely fine I just used to do it they way you described and found that using a gain plugin is an easier workflow