liability company industry digital audio engineering founded 1997 key people john la grou chairman david mcgrath daniel weiss glenn zelniker products dithering algorithms by license revenue private company website http www.mil media.com pow r.html pow r psychoacoustically optimized wordlength reduction is a set of commercial dithering and noise shaping algorithms used in digital audio bit depth reduction . developed by a consortium of four companies the pow r consortium the algorithms were first made available in 1999 in digital audio hardware products . pow r is now licensed for use by many companies particularly those in the digital audio workstation daw arena where it currently has significant market share . contents 1 history 2 reception 3 technical details 4 see also 5 further reading 6 references history edit pow r was developed between 1997 and 1998 after an unfavorable change in the licensing terms of a leading bit depth reduction algorithm of the time prompted some of its licensees to put together a consortium to develop a viable alternative algorithm . formed by four audio engineering companies lake technology dolby labs weiss engineering millennia media and z systems the consortium set out with the goal to create the most sonically transparent dithering algorithm possible . 1 in 1999 the first products containing pow r were released by consortium companies . 1 other companies became interested in using pow r in their products and the algorithms are now licensed to a number of leading daw vendors including apple computer avid digidesign sonic studio cakewalk sonar 2 merging technologies 3 ableton 4 magix sequoia samplitude and others . reception edit one of the first products to include pow r was a hardware dithering unit from weiss engineering ; in a review of this product in 1999 mastering engineer bob katz spoke highly of the new algorithm declaring it an incredible achievement . 1 technical details edit technically the entire pow r suite is not noise shaping ; rather the original pow r algorithm is based on narrow band nyquist dither while other pow r algorithms include noise shaping and white noise . 5 unlike noise shaping algorithms based on an absolute threshold of hearing model i.e. the quietest sound that can be heard on otherwise silent conditions pow r has been designed to give optimal performance at normal listening levels . here optimal performance means maximizing the apparent dynamic range of the resultant signal while simultaneously minimizing the audible effects of the dither and quantization noise which if this is not achieved are typically tonal in nature . 1 since noise audibility depends on the nature of the audio being processed the pow r algorithm is made available in three variants optimized respectively for simple program such as spoken word limited dynamic range program such as rock music and wide dynamic range program such as orchestral music . 5 each algorithm moves the noise to those frequencies where its audible effect for the particular audio type is minimized . the graph to the right shows the frequency response of the orchestral music algorithm variant pow r3 a 9th order filter 1 . see also edit dithering mastering noise shaping quantization further reading edit bobby owsinski sally englefried 2000 . the mastering engineer s handbook . mix books . isbn 0 87288 741 3 . bob katz 2007 . mastering audio second edition the art and the science . focal press . isbn 978 0 240 80837 6 . references edit a b c d e katz bob . weiss engineering pow r dither . retrieved 12 march 2009 . review of sonar 4 merging technologies press release ableton what s new a b manufacturer s pow r data sheet retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title pow r & oldid 647218063 categories digital audiohidden categories use dmy dates from october 2011 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 15 february 2015 at 08 30 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view