What headroom means

Headroom is the space between your loudest signal and 0 dBFS. You need it to apply compression and limiting at the end of the chain without the signal clipping before it reaches the limiter. Target −6 dB of headroom on the master bus before the limiter.

Gain staging

Every plugin in your chain can add or remove gain. A saturator might push +3 dB. A reverb return might add +2 dB. If you're not compensating, your signal accumulates gain through the chain and the master bus receives a hot, pre-clipped signal.

Check: bypass your limiter on the master. Is the signal above 0 dBFS? If yes, you have a gain staging problem upstream — not a limiting problem.

The fix

Use a gain plugin (or the channel volume) after each heavy processing stage to bring the signal back to −12 to −6 dBFS. Then your limiter only needs to catch the last few dB — and it'll sound transparent.

PRISM detected True Peak exceeds −1 dBTP or clipping was detected. The action plan shows the exact peak value and recommended correction.
RECOMMENDED TOOLS

To fix this loudness problem, here are the tools PRISM producers reach for most — each picked for this specific case, not a generic list.

FabFilter Pro-L 2 →
Transparent limiter with True Peak limiting and LUFS metering
iZotope Ozone 11 →
Full mastering suite with gain staging assistant