I have a dumb question then... if I see clipping on my daw screen or plugin screen or on the face of my interface clip led is that referring to clipping the converters?
The converters aren't clipping unless you see the light on in the converter is how I'd answer that question.
My working assumption is that those little red lights mean different things depending on where they are, of course. (But, I always avoid them to be sure, honestly.)
But, basically, anywhere there is analog to integral digital conversion going on, you have to assume that they are significant, because it's trying to tell you that
something is going to get shaved off the top in that process. How much is shaved, whether it's significantly audible, etc., all are probably going to determine whether any single listener can hear it or be bothered by it.
So, on an analog preamp, maybe not a problem, and who knows, maybe you want it there, but when it hits the interface, if it's not dialed back, and the light goes on there, likely a bad thing.
Within the DAW, if it's using big floating point numbers, it might not mean as much, since it's possible that the floating point data can actually hold those values and not lose data until they're bounced to fixed point, and maybe you'll correct that later. But, that's really dependent on the DAW, and you could certainly validate that with your own easily enough.
In a plugin, I'd guess "it depends" is the best answer, because they might work with the floating point numbers and so you're back to not mattering until you actually bounce to fixed point. But, really, unless you know what goes on inside the plugin software, I don't think there's a universal answer, so if you insist on working with the red lights blazing, the best option is to test with bounces to your final format and look/listen for those flattop haircuts.