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

matt j said:
Doesn't mean anything to me, I've owned loads of flat earth stuff and never heard this illusive PRAT. It's all a load of marketing bollocks.
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It’s far more obvious when it is not there IMO. I’ll not name names but I’ve certainly heard systems that can strip the funk and groove out of even the best drummers. A walk round any hi-fi show can be a real eye-opener in this regard. Some stuff grooves, some stuff just doesn’t, and to my ears it is often the exact opposite to what the marketing and review hype would have you believe.
 
Does the musician / band sound like they are really into what they are playing - or are they just going through the motions ? Do you anticipate the next note ?

That’s what defines PrAT for me
 
MJS said:
I must admit I've become a fan of Tony Mansfield and New Musik and their first two albums contain some great analogue synth, guitars, sibilant vocals and compression that is quite demanding.
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Another New Musik fan. That makes just two of us I think.
 
tenpercenter said:
Does the musician / band sound like they are really into what they are playing - or are they just going through the motions ? Do you anticipate the next note ?

That’s what defines PrAT for me
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Colour me confused, but that sounds like gobbledegook to me. Sorry. :(
 
My old LP12/Exposure/MA system, which I ran for 20 years, had it in spades. To keep it you had to use spiked tables and stands, simple cheap interconnects and Naim NAC A5. Imaging was excellent but there was little 'soundstage'. In some ways you had to make a choice between PRaT and HiFi.

My current system is much more mature:D
 
I simply do not understand what PRaT is, and suspect I have no interest in it. I remember playing with a NAC62 20 odd years ago, I built a PSU and then modified the pre itself, in the end I realized I was trying to move it away from the hard leading edge it excelled in and to give it more ability for a 3D soundstage. I took a punt on a valve pre and the NAC has sat in its box in the cellar ever since.

I’m lucky, I seem to have reached nirvana with my Hi-Fi recently - Croft Mega Micro and lifting ESL63 outrageously high seem to have done the trick. There is now texture and timing to every single note…is that PRaT, no ideA - I love it though :)
 
Hifi is similar to Crocs, which we all know are basically crappy rubber shoes. They sell like the clappers and nobody is really sure why they like them. However, they are easily upgradeable by adding small ‘shoe charms’ or simply by purchasing the latest seasons offering.

Hifi sells on similar principals. It works on a ‘I like that sound’, for about five minutes before doubt creeps in and off we go again to the next upgrade (Notwithstanding of course, the odd annoying old bugger that just sticks with what they’ve got and simply listens to music).

Crocs have great ‘prat’, unfortunately you can’t measure this due to their superior damping qualities. It’s merely something you feel as you shuffle around the living room changing records and peering suspiciously at your furry stylus ( and no, that’s not a euphemism).
 
Tony L said:
That’s impressive. Best I managed was clearing the Nottingham Analogue room with a German techno 12” (LSG). Had a great chat with Tom Fletcher afterwards so it was well worth doing.

PS I remember taking PIL’s Metal Box to dealer dems in the past.
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Great album, remember going to the local record shop and behind the counter on a shelf full of albums sat metal box in its original film can. As a 12 year old music fan it was a wow moment. Sadly I didn't have the money to buy it and had to settle for the second edition.
 
h.g. said:
The tentative conclusion I came to was that it was likely one of several audiophile examples which started with the initial intention to demonstrate the gullibility of audiophiles but when it took hold was instead exploited. Like all good trolling you have to let the informed know what you are doing which was done in this case via the meaning of the acronym.
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Maybe that’s why they didn’t choose Timing, Rhythm And Pace.
 
Dowser said:
I’m lucky, I seem to have reached nirvana with my Hi-Fi recently - Croft Mega Micro and lifting ESL63 outrageously high seem to have done the trick. There is now texture and timing to every single note…is that PRaT, no ideA - I love it though :)
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As I imply in my post don’t assume that products you were told had good timing actually did! ESLs are stunning speakers, they are in an entirely different ballpark to most of the stuff people used back in the ‘80s when the term was coined.
 
JV was a big fan on the original ESLs. Of course one Naim employee (Guy from France?) designed a version for him.
 
Tony L said:
Yes, audio stuff certainly happens in the time domain; impulse response, phase, port tuning, mass, damping, inertia, storage etc. It’s all basic physics; actions, reactions etc.
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Sorry Tony, a hifi will not make musicians more interested in what they were doing or retrospectively anticipate the next note. Hifi can certainly portray time information more accurately, and possibly the listener may think these things...but it does not make them to have happened in the session!
 
Nic Robinson said:
Sorry Tony, a hifi will not make musicians more interested in what they were doing or retrospectively anticipate the next note. Hifi can certainly portray time information more accurately, and possibly the listener may think these things...but it does not make them to have happened in the session!
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Far more accurate to say hi-fi can screw it up!

I’d argue all hi-fi screws this up to some degree as multi-driver moving-coil loudspeakers are just so imperfect, just so far from any theoretical ideal. I’ve felt for a long time this timing and dynamic domain is neglected, especially now we have so many crusaders burping up unbelievably simplistic frequency response charts believing they know everything about everything. I’d love to see far more focus placed on timing, phase, dynamic response etc. I suspect this is where the music on a recording lives or dies getting into the listening room.
 
A Naim “thing” = slight forwardness in sound, translated into a marketing aura of how a supposedly masterful and tuneful reproduction of the music takes you along. The trade off - not as good a soundstage, transparency and detail level. I think Naim themselves are trying to go more balanced these days, at least in their higher range?
 
Woodface said:
I don’t think the current naim range is particularly forward sounding
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FWIW I don’t think the ‘chrome bumper’ stuff was either! My mental image of a Naim system is a Naim amp with a LP12 upstream and Linn (Isobariks, Saras, Kans) or many other speakers (Gale 401s, Mission 770s, Heybrook HB2s or whatever) downstream. That’s a pretty warm and bouncy system in most respects. The lean and forward thing happened later and that’s when I jumped ship. I never got that at all. I never got full Linn systems either.
 
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