glossary
Floating-point headroom is useful, but it does not make every stage immune to clipping.
Many DAWs use floating-point mix engines that can represent signal above 0 dBFS internally. Pulling a fader down later may recover that level without permanent clipping.
That does not mean every plugin, bus, export, or converter in the chain can accept unlimited level.
Plugins may model analog headroom, oversample internally, or clip their input even inside a floating-point session. Final exports to fixed-point formats and D/A conversion also need real peak margin.
If the master output or rendered file clips, internal floating-point safety no longer helps.
Use floating-point headroom as protection from accidental internal overload, not as a reason to ignore gain staging.
Meter Core helps reveal whether levels are healthy at the point that matters: the output your listener or delivery platform receives.