I'm not positive, but I believe it is A > D and then D > A, but I expect this happens at some outrageous oversampling (like 128 times faster than 96khz) and at 24 bit, so personally I think this is only a problem in theory, not in practice. The noise picked up in the cable connections would probably effect the sound more than these extra conversions.
The other consideration is that it would inherit the flavor of the pre... so when I record SBD into my Warm/Vintage mod R4, and you patch that you get Warm flavor into your Transparent. If there were 5 in a daisy chain, all warm, it might get weird.