The purpose of a true peak limit of -1 dBTP is to prevent what?

• A. Clipping and inter-sample distortion
• B. Masking
• C. Phase cancellation
• D. Distortion at low levels

Answer: (A)

Pushing the true peak to a safe margin protects against peaks that can occur between the sampled values when the signal is played back. Even if the digital samples don’t hit 0 dBFS, the reconstructed waveform at the DAC can overshoot due to interpolation, upsampling, or processing downstream. Limiting to -1 dBTP gives about 1 dB of headroom for those inter-sample peaks, keeping the actual analog peak below the maximum and preventing clipping in the playback chain. This headroom also helps avoid inter-sample distortion that can happen when those overshoots are converted. Masking, phase cancellation, and distortion at low levels aren’t what this limit is designed to address—the concern here is preventing clipping and the subtle overshoots that occur between samples.