True Peak

A digital waveform is a series of measurements, and the loudest instant often falls between two of them. Sample-peak meters miss it. True peak reconstructs the curve between samples and reports the actual maximum, written in dBTP. This matters because playback converts the file back to a continuous signal, and lossy encoding redraws the waveform, both of which can push those hidden peaks above zero and produce audible distortion on a file that looked clean in the editor. Headroom is the cure. Put the limiter in true-peak mode and leave the ceiling around -1 dBTP, so encoding has somewhere to move.