Thank you for your contributions, untill i can resolve the absolute volume issue i have no way of monitoring cuts and edits of the audio. As you can imagine this is more of a hardware/setup issue than a workflow problem. I understand fully what you said about using the level meters to evaluate audio level, however as the in program volume is beyond my threshold to cope with i would essentialy be editing audio deaf as i cannot bare anything above -25db on the vu at the current uncontrolable volume.
I am not at home right now so cannot confirm what settings are being used however the additional comments made since my post last night have aided research a little and it is possible that it is linked to this xonar cards ASIO handling. This essentially bypasses any OS audio handling, which in turn explains why volume and muting in the system volume tray has no effect in Premiere. The down side being the output is maxed out and painfully loud from what would normally be comfortable volume.
i will be trialling several drivers this evening for my sound card to see if anything changes and also seeing if ASIO can be disabled or an alternative process used instead. Not using ASIO in theory could introduce some lag but for my use i doubt this would be a problem.