From: http://lib.roland.co.jp/manual/en/dl_08-24182/r44_guide_e1.pdf
Note bottom hint.
That image file visually explains perfectly why both the inner knob and the limiter are dead to me, LOL.
^^^
After the last round of confusion I'm completely back on board with this view.
Welcome to 4 channel fun sanaka.
It seems that Edirol somewhat murkily says in their literature that the inner knob is all on the digital side and that 12:00 is unity, from what I gather from quotes of Doug Oade, he says he traced some of the circuitry and that the inner knob works at least partially on the analog side. Sorry Doug, I'm going with Edirol until proven wrong. No offense, but they built the thing, not that they couldn't be wrong in their literature but ...
What this effectively does is make the "meter" on the digital side and somewhat meaningless unless the inner knob is set to unity. The only true metering of just the analog side is those channel markers reversing when clipping, and I'm not even sure about that. So I agree about the inner knob, set it and forget it. There may be some situation where it is useful but I can't think of one. Maybe to bring up low levels when running 16 bit.
BTW, the meters seem to work just fine with the inner knob at unity even if they are on the digital side. They are just a bit hard to read.