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Pace, rhythm and timing. What do these terms mean to you with respect to hifi?

I think this forum is good a highlighting differences between people. We clearly don't all have similar preferences and requirements from our music systems.

At the end of the day, you have to find what works best for you. If you discover some like minded forum friends along the way then all the better.
 
sideshowbob said:
The irony, ofc, is that Martin Colloms' original article was an attempt (failed) to bring some precision to how people described their subjective impressions. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to explain what they mean by a term when there is ambiguity, or when it has a precise technical meaning but seems to be being used in a different way.
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I'd certainly agree with this. What I have more of a problem with, is people scoring points rather than simply seeking the clarification they need.
 
Surely it only applies to low frequencies? How could something be considered to have good prat if the bass is bloated?

Or to put it another way, could anyone suggest a speaker with tight bass that has bad prat?
 
I know this comes a bit later than the heyday of PRaT as a marketing term, but in reading multiple Stereophile reviews of Naim CD players I was struck by how often and consistently Atkinson measured the clocks as being ever so slightly fast. It would be difficult to establish for sure whether it's enough to be perceptible but if it were, that nearly subconscious speed-up might be enough to feel that the Naim player has better pace or timing than a competing player.
 
sideshowbob said:
The irony, ofc, is that Martin Colloms' original article was an attempt (failed) to bring some precision to how people described their subjective impressions. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to explain what they mean by a term when there is ambiguity, or when it has a precise technical meaning but seems to be being used in a different way.
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The language of aesthetics is always going to be problematic. This is the case if, for example, someone is trying to describe the taste of a certain wine; beyond the basics there's a double danger of ambiguity and psuedery. The same applies to lit crit, where anything more complex than 'I like this book' involves technical language and jargon, around which there is frequent disagreement about the meaning of particular words and phrases.

With PR&T, we're getting to the 'Humpty-Dumpty' point in this discussion where the acronym means what any individual chooses it to mean, but the alternative would have to be the precise pinning down of what each word in the acronym means, and it's far too hot for that sort of thing.
 
Fatmarley said:
Surely it only applies to low frequencies? How could something be considered to have good prat if the bass is bloated?
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If the bass has poor transient response then it modifies the envelope of the sound wave. I think this is audible and to some extent can mask other frequencies.
Then there is the issue of the bass fundamental "lining up" with the harmonics correctly.
I guess there is a possibility that if the resonance of a non-ideal speaker was to align (by chance) with the beat of the music, it could appear to be more impressive.

Fatmarley said:
Or to put it another way, could anyone suggest a speaker with tight bass that has bad prat?
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Maybe my old KEF Coda II fits this?
It's a closed box design with -3dB @ 65Hz, so probably had tight-ish bass. However it definitely had a problem with blurring some sounds together.
https://us.kef.com/pub/media/pdf/Coda_II.pdf
 
gustav_errata said:
I know this comes a bit later than the heyday of PRaT as a marketing term, but in reading multiple Stereophile reviews of Naim CD players I was struck by how often and consistently Atkinson measured the clocks as being ever so slightly fast. It would be difficult to establish for sure whether it's enough to be perceptible but if it were, that nearly subconscious speed-up might be enough to feel that the Naim player has better pace or timing than a competing player.
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A fabricated illusion then? ...but, as you say, would it be perceptible?

Interesting nonetheless.
 
S-Man said:
I guess there is a possibility that if the resonance of a non-ideal speaker was to align (by chance) with the beat of the music, it could appear to be more impressive.
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The sealed box, JPW AP2 have a large peak centred around 100hz. With the right music (quite a lot of music in fact) it makes the bass sound very, very tight and punchy. It's not accurate though and some music doesn't sound good as a result.

S-Man said:
Maybe my old KEF Coda II fits this?
It's a closed box design with -3dB @ 65Hz, so probably had tight-ish bass. However it definitely had a problem with blurring some sounds together.
https://us.kef.com/pub/media/pdf/Coda_II.pdf
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So the coda has tight bass, but prat issues? As I said earlier, to me, prat is in the low frequencies. Surely "blurring some sounds" isn't a prat issue?
 
It seems to me we have a choice here. Is PR&T measurable? Can the individual elements be identified on a graph? If so, let's see the measurements. Even if we as individuals find that the PR&T sound is not to our taste, we'll at least know that it's 'a thing'.

If, on the other hand, PR&T is not measurable, then we're down to whatever anybody thinks the term means; 'good sound' in a vague way maybe.
 
gustav_errata said:
I know this comes a bit later than the heyday of PRaT as a marketing term, but in reading multiple Stereophile reviews of Naim CD players I was struck by how often and consistently Atkinson measured the clocks as being ever so slightly fast. It would be difficult to establish for sure whether it's enough to be perceptible but if it were, that nearly subconscious speed-up might be enough to feel that the Naim player has better pace or timing than a competing player.
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How fast compared to the correct rate are we talking about here? A fast or slow clock in a CD player will cause a slight pitch shift of whatever is being played. A 1% change is audible if you're looking for it. 0.5% is difficult to discern even with fast switching, but it can be done, at least by some people. For reference, a semitone is about 6%. Digital playback devices (CD players and DACs) typically have much better accuracy. The worst I've seen is the AQ Dragonfly (all models) which is about 0.04% fast for some sample rates. Now even if the pitch is off, the relative timing of notes will remain correct, so I doubt this is the explanation for anything.
 
mansr said:
How fast compared to the correct rate are we talking about here? A fast or slow clock in a CD player will cause a slight pitch shift of whatever is being played. A 1% change is audible if you're looking for it. 0.5% is difficult to discern even with fast switching, but it can be done, at least by some people. For reference, a semitone is about 6%. Digital playback devices (CD players and DACs) typically have much better accuracy. The worst I've seen is the AQ Dragonfly (all models) which is about 0.04% fast for some sample rates. Now even if the pitch is off, the relative timing of notes will remain correct, so I doubt this is the explanation for anything.
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Presumably the track plays slightly faster, too? So, a 5 minute (300 second) track would finish in 4’57” if it were 1% fast. It might not be immediately apparent, but could account for a small preference for the ‘pacier’ or ‘livelier’ presentation in an A/B dem, say.
 
mansr said:
How fast compared to the correct rate are we talking about here? A fast or slow clock in a CD player will cause a slight pitch shift of whatever is being played. A 1% change is audible if you're looking for it. 0.5% is difficult to discern even with fast switching, but it can be done, at least by some people. For reference, a semitone is about 6%. Digital playback devices (CD players and DACs) typically have much better accuracy. The worst I've seen is the AQ Dragonfly (all models) which is about 0.04% fast for some sample rates. Now even if the pitch is off, the relative timing of notes will remain correct, so I doubt this is the explanation for anything.
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He measured it in "ppm", the meaning of which I cannot discern from context (to my mind it means "parts per million" but I don't think that makes sense here). The CD 3.5 has a clock error of +629ppm. Given his example error on 20kHz, that puts it at only 0.063%. So by your reckoning, imperceptible, I guess. He estimates it as such too.

The CD5 and CDX are still fast but not that much (0.0003% by Atkinson's reckoning).
 
That might make an interesting AB test: ask participants to listen to two CD players which differ only in clock speed and ask which one sounds "livelier" or, dare I suggest, "has more PRaT". ;)

The hypothesis here being that it's not perceptible as a definite change in speed and pitch, but rather still exerts a subliminal effect on perception of pace or timing.
 
Sorry, I should add that one player being a bit fast is easily chalked up to engineering oversight, but for it to be consistent across generations of CD players starts to raise the question of whether it's intentional. Think what you will of Naim, it's uncharitable to label them sloppy.
 
Joe Hutch said:
It seems to me we have a choice here. Is PR&T measurable? Can the individual elements be identified on a graph? If so, let's see the measurements. Even if we as individuals find that the PR&T sound is not to our taste, we'll at least know that it's 'a thing'.

If, on the other hand, PR&T is not measurable, then we're down to whatever anybody thinks the term means; 'good sound' in a vague way maybe.
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Why would we even want to try to measure a subjective term?

I've done a lot of experiments with different bass roll-off frequencies and played around with port tuning. IME the measurements and the sound quality are very strongly related.
These measurements are well defined (objective). Readers will have to take my subjective results as opinion - but isn't that always the case for everybody?
 
I don't want to measure anything, but ISTM that if PR&T is just 'how I want stuff to sound', then the term is a) meaningless and thus b) useless.
 
gustav_errata said:
He measured it in "ppm", the meaning of which I cannot discern from context (to my mind it means "parts per million" but I don't think that makes sense here). The CD 3.5 has a clock error of +629ppm. Given his example error on 20kHz, that puts it at only 0.063%. So by your reckoning, imperceptible, I guess. He estimates it as such too.

The CD5 and CDX are still fast but not that much (0.0003% by Atkinson's reckoning).
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Parts per million is correct, and 600 ppm is rather poor. Even cheap crystal oscillators typically achieve better than 100 ppm accuracy. Still, it is well below what would be audible.
 
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