What is "pow-r"

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.