I had no idea, so I Googled it. Found a lengthy explanation on the-ear.net, but I couldn't get through the article and stay awake. I need Cliffs Notes. Lol.
What exactly is PRaT???
Ok, it’s like this thing and is associated with “toe tapping” and such. I confess, I don’t get it. Apparently companies like Linn and Naim get it, and I don’t and find it a bit frustrating. What am I missing? I’m a drummer and am as sensitive as anyone to timing and beats, so why don’t I perceive this PRaT thing that many of you obviously do and prize as it occurs in stereo systems? When I read many Brit reviews a lot of attention goes to “rhythm” and “timing” and it’s useless to me and I just don’t get it. If someone can give me a concrete example of what the hell I’m not getting I’d sincerely be most appreciative. To be clear, enough people I greatly respect consider it a thing so objectively speaking it’s either something I can’t hear or maybe just don’t care about — or both. Can someone finally define this “thing” for me cause I seriously wanna learn something I clearly don’t know or understand.
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This kind of sums it up (right video this time)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qJrF4_8lCY
DeKay |
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@jastralfu *sigh* +1....that does sum it up, but we "still look to find a reason to believe.." .. ;) |
I would avoid the boogie factor because, being a drummer, you probably have a name for that - triplet feel or whatever. I think the cleanest example would be to take two examples of the same song. One was mastered in the 80s as a bargain basement tape. The other was original - or a strong remaster later. The difference in how they make you feel - despite being the same exact music - is the PRaT. The haze or opaque blocking is removed. I generally put the effect in two groups - transients and bloom. How much definition is there between notes and how much strength is each note afforded. There’s a balance needed - and it changes for each recording. |
Thanks @soix , this is a bit of a mystery to me too, though I don’t doubt that it exists. Maybe it goes by other names, or feelings, when everything has that just right feeling. |
@Soix - PRaT is what you get when you engineer a sound that is harmonically lean and emphasises the leading edge of the dynamic envelope. Being a drummer, unless you are a really bad drummer (which I'm sure you aren't), I'm no doubt you are perfectly capable of hearing this if you listen to the kinds of system's favoured by "PRaT" lovers. The term started to be used in the 1980's when Linn/Naim orthodoxy was at it's height in the UK. It started to fall away when a broader range of equipment started to be popular - most of it coming from the USA. Away from the quasi cultist aspects of this, there is an underlying germ of truth in the sense that some components can be more coherent than others. However, that coherence is exhibited in the reproduction being full frequency and having a natural musical flow i.e. the system is expressing the recording and not superimposing a tailored sonic signature on it. |
Some guys may be conflating what is baked into/inherent to the track/recording itself (instruments, notes being played, etc) as aome accomplishment of their gear. Such a track may seem to have great prrrrrtttt on all kinds of equipment (because in reality it was Bonham making you feel that way). Otherwise, and if the same track is compared on different equipment, some technical parameters can be attributed to this perception of prrrrrtttttt. On speakers...the stored energy graph can be an indicator, no huge phase shifts from crossover, etc....low power set is a prrrrttttt killer, etc This perception also varies greatly from listener to listener and the type of music. Some guys may only listen to some sleepy boring gal whispering slowly for hours to a very slow boring string. There may not even be any percussion involved. Such listeners may not think or need to care about prrrrtttt parameters.
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I was a Linn/Naim devotee in the early 80's when my interest in home audio started. My dealer espoused the Linn/Naim credo: Source-first hierarchy, Garbage in/garbage out, single speaker listening rooms, "testing" components by toe tapping and humming the melody, etc. Of course, as my music interests changed, it was hard to hum and toe tap to Schoenberg, but I sort of got what they were saying. I just started drum lessons again after taking 50 years off. When I was 13, it was a rock and roll backbeat that I was interested in. Now I want to swing my ride cymbals with dotted 8th's and feel the looser syncopated pulse. My drum teacher believes in the metronome, and also in ditching the metronome so you can feel the rhythm with your body. I think that my Linn dealer used PRaT in that way: You'll know it when you feel it, and you'll feel it with us, and not with the other guys. I was an art teacher most of my life, and we are always using metaphors and simile to describe the ineffable. I personally think that trying to describe the rhythmic qualities of electronic gear is like that. It points to something that may be important, but it remains out of reach. |
I've always interpreted it as speed and clarity. The attack and decay of notes are distinct and on time. Some speakers excel at this. I'm less clear about what it means for electronics but I assume the electronics play a role in creating that. I had a pair of speaker cables that seemed to slow the attack and it felt like notes were actually late in timing and decayed too soon. As soon as I changed cables, that disappeared.
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While, in general, I don’t like McGowen’s PRaTel, he certainly acknowledges its existence in the video. So, I agree with him. What he doesn’t talk about is how to sense it. I think it is about the hardest of the attributes to sense (although once you finally get it, it is easy). He alludes to the symptoms of good PRaT, but not what it sounds like. It is not like detail. In detail, to sense it you collapse your focus of attention to individual sounds with in the sound field… like the tick of a drumstick or a bowed violin and listen intensely. If you are concentrating on bass, you tend to open up your focus of attention because bass is less directional. PRaT is more a function of a very large part of the sound field. To sense it close your eyes and sense the draw or connection to the rhythm. For me, it all came to me at once when I was listening to a system with great PRaT and memories of auditions of several past systems that had emotionally tugged at me (syrupy tube systems) but were unappealing for other shortcomings. That is when it came together. It is like a gestalt attribute produced across the sound field and the symptoms of it are the foot tap and desire to move (if only in your head). It can take a long time so sense it. Highly contrasting systems can really help. Audition a solid state Luxman / Magico system then a Conrad Johnson or VAC / Sonus Faber system. The former is virtually devoid of PRaT the latter very rich with it. A Pass / DynAudio system is likely to be in the middle. Hopefully this is helpful. |
I have always fancied, however erroneously, that PRAT was often due to very slightly erratic timing which is why tube amps sometimes can be masters of PRAT perhaps because something in some tubes is faintly "off" timing wise. This in turn might create a sense of naturalness or "live" performance even if the tunes have been very precisely guided in the studio. Sometimes PRAT can be that ineffable thing called "swing." SRV nearly always had it in his playing. The Stones often made Pratty records perhaps because of their catch-as-catch-can recording practices. |
I'm not sure what's so confusing about it. Audio systems are a combination of mechanical devices that work together to reproduce that elusive thing called music. There are well-made devices and badly-made devices. There are devices that work well together and devices that don't. A Chevy Geo isn't going to give you the same driving experience as a Ferrari. A speaker with woolly, sluggish bass and misaligned drivers isn't going to convey the speed and accuracy of your drumming very well, is it? Likewise, an amp with poor transient response is going to fail to do that. I'm sure you don't need to be told that pace, rhythm and timing are essential qualities in a good musical performance, whether it's a Haydn trio or a Steely Dan song. I think "PRAT" is just a short-hand way of saying that a certain piece of audio equipment, or a combination of them, conveys those qualities (or the lack of them) effectively. (AFAIC, not all the system PRAT in the world can make "Jazz at the Pawnshop" sound like an Eddie Condon group.) I think it's also a shorthand way of saying that a system conveys the emotional qualities of a performance. A system doesn't have to do EVERYTHING perfectly--any system is going to have limitations of some sort--but if it conveys the essentials it can still provide more enjoyment than a far more expensive and unwieldy system that doesn't. I've been in this hobby a long time too, and I've heard systems that DON'T convey the joy of music. And if you've ever spent any time building your own amps, preamps or speakers, it's not difficult to understand how easy it is to get it wrong. |
@tunehead Provides the only realistic answer. Dirk and Lerxst approved. |
Well, if this thread has taught me anything it’s that this thing called PRaT is pretty indescribable in words and is just a “feel” thing I just apparently don’t — and probably never will — get or care about. I appreciate all your attempts to educate me, but I still just don’t get it. Music either sounds real to me or it doesn’t. Period. I just can’t relate that to timing, “pace” whatever the hell that is or “rhythm” whatever the hell that is. I think most famously Art Dudley used to focus on timing and beats, and I never got anything he was talking about and never got much from any of his reviews. Kind of like Herb Reichert or Sam Tellig — I like reading their prose but never, ever, get anything out of whether I wanna buy a component because they’re just too opaque. They write just to write for their own sake. It’s entertaining to read but ultimately not very useful IMHO. I could be wrong as usual, but what say you? I think this could be an interesting topic for further discussion. |
@danager Great song. How does that tell me absolutely anything about PRaT??? My system sounds great playing that song so what EXACTLY makes a better PRaT system sound better doing that? I mean, as a drummer you’re either on the beat or you’re not. And I’ve not heard a system that’s “behind” the beat. You gotta come at me with more than a single song. I’m willing or learn, but this ain’t it. |
It's just a euphemism for something that simply sounds more authentic. Being more authentic gets you more involved with the sound and gets you to toe tapping. I think the mystery behind it that we're looking at it with a modern perspective that can't understand why something so mid range centric as the Naim/Linn sound back in good old days can be called authentic when modern systems can beat them at that game. Remember that the midrange accounts for about 80% and once they got that down convincingly, PRaT became a thing. Practically all modern systems have the ability to sound pretty authentic but we still find PRaT to be elusive and that all boils down to the quality of the recording: how well it was done. Great sound in, great sound out. All the best, |
@soix Well, your own system includes select cables, amp upgrades, and a lot of other refinements, so clearly you’ve spent some time developing a system that plays music the way you want to hear it. I assume you didn’t just close your eyes and grab whatever came to hand. If "PRAT" doesn’t mean anything to you, it doesn’t. For a lot of audiophiles, especially people getting started in the hobby, it can be a helpful measure of where your money is best spent. WhatHiFi is, IMO, one of the more reliable review sites and they devote a fair portion of every review talking about the equipment’s ability convey joy and rhythm, and generally a good musical experience. Nothing wrong with that. |
If Etta makes you want to move , isn't that Prat and if it's just meh isn't that lack of PRat? I suspect you're already PRaT maxed out. As a musician timing means something different than what it means to a typical listener. The beat is on the recording and unless you cassette player or vinyl speeds up and slows down the beat is the same no matter the system. From my perception of what is being described is more a leading edge dynamic artifact. When the stick hits the drum head it's more than a single event. Where you hit it, how much force, which drum and how the drum is tuned has a different level of priority to some. The same goes for stringed and wind instruments. The ability for your stereo to reproduce (enhance) aspects of the music affects the music's enjoyment factor. The same song can sound dull and lifeless or jaw dropping spectacular depending on both the system and your state of mind. There are times (usually late at night) where my stereo just sounds better than it did previously. Does that mean someone somewhere turned up the PRat or is that just an lack vocabulary to actually describe the many aspects that make up our hobby? |
@dogearedaudio Well, yeah nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t tell me squat about whether I wanna listen to a piece of gear or not. What HiFi sucks IMHO, and they don’t ever compare whatever equipment is under review to anything else. Why? Because they don’t wanna be held accountable like all the Brit mags. Useless. Utterly useless reviews. |
I've always thought this was a term that only made sense to the person who coined it. The only explanation I can personally come up with is the timing part which I would attribute to a lack of phase coherence among drivers in a single cabinet. As to rhythm and pace just more terms to ascribe to a system that is likable and a joy to listen to. Regards, barts
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Most audiophiles seem to live in the frequency domain. Mid-range this, bass that, treble something else. But music exists in the time domain, as a waveform. Our ears have evolved (as our primary danger sensors) to be incredibly sensitive to the arrival time of sound waves. Our pinnae are shaped to give us a 3D aural image giving the height and orientation of the source sound, even if it behind our heads. There is a Chesky recoding of a repeated chirrup which on a good 2-channel system appears to rise vertically from one speaker before moving in an arc across the ceiling and descending to the other speaker. I cannot think of much in nature that works in the frequency domain, apart from resonances and ears. The tuned hairs in our snail-shaped cochlea fire nerves when they resonate. The sequence in which they fire feeds our neural network which processes in the time domain. Our systems on the other hand typically take the waveform and decompose it into frequency bands before feeding each band to a dynamic driver - tweeter, mid-range, bass etc.. We then desperately try to time-align these drivers to get back the original waveform, but physics gets in the way. Unless the drivers act as a point source (not a line source) reflections from walls, floors and ceiling will not be time aligned at the listening position. Time domain waveforms can be converted to frequency domain using Fourier transforms, and vice versa. Start with a square wave, which contains all higher harmonics of the base frequency, and produce the frequency spectrum using a Fourier transform. Take that spectrum and Fourier transform it, hoping to get the original square wave back. Well, you get a square wave but it has a pronounced leading spike, mathematically and practically. Linn was all about trying to avoid spurious resonances in the table / arm / cartridge source, with the subjective outcome that listeners were more likely to tap in time with the music. The most coherent loudspeaker was the Quad electrostatic ESL-63, designed in 1963 to emulate a point source of sound about a foot behind the flat panel. It took a further 18 years of development before the ESL-63 was offered to the market. The final test of each production speaker was to compare it to a reference speaker with a microphone exactly equidistant. A square wave was played to the reference speaker and the same wave with opposite polarity went to the speaker under test. If the microphone gave no output, the speaker passed. These speakers and their descendants have specifications that read like amplifier specifications. Peter Walker said of them "if you don't like what comes out, pay more attention to what goes in". Try some. If you don't get PRaT, you probably never will!
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What would a discussion of PRAT be without bringing in marijuana? Why Weed and Music Go So Well Together "Dr. Jörg Fachner: [Marijuana] works like a psycho-acoustic enhancer. That means you are more able to absorb, to focus on something, and to have a bit of a broader spectrum. It doesn’t change the music; it doesn’t change the ear functioning. Obviously it changes the way we perceive ear space in music. It also changes time perception, and if you listen to music, it is a time process, so if you have a different time perception of course you will listen differently to music. |
I know a bit of what PRaT is. I’ve also experienced it, A writer once wrote "PRaT can take decades to understand". He might be right, PRaT indeed is a hard thing to understand because it is not just 1 thing. From what I’ve experienced, PRaT - at least some part of it allows the music to flow in perfect synchrony. It is indeed a rare trait. |
The first time I ever heard of it was right here on A'gon, and I didn't get it either. I mean, it seems to me that "pace, rhythm and tempo" is what the band either did or didn't do during the recording session, and if they did do it, the rest was up to the guys and/or gals doing the recording and mastering. I would have never thought that this was the function of the consumer's playback gear. However, one of the upgrades I made that most grabbed my attention was in '99 when I replaced a B&K digital HT preamp with a secondhand Carp SLP 90. My initial reaction was, "So this is what "musical" means." But I was never able to put what I heard into words that I could use to describe it. |
As a drummer, you know you can push the beat or play more relaxed and still be "on time". It's a feel thing. I notice it most on plucked strings. Acoustic guitar, mandolin, pizz strings. I think it's mostly about transient response on the high end and maybe damping on the low end to respond accurately to the speed of the waveform. |
@stuartk No. I do not. A system either plays music the way I perceive it or it does not. If a system truncates highs, sounds bleached or lacking in tone, or sounds two dimensional I get that. Timing? Pace? No. These things are not in my audiophile vocabulary. A system either plays music in a believable way or it does not. I’ve never heard a system that sounds “slow” or lacks ”pace” or whatever the hell that is. I just don’t get it. I will say this though, I was at an audio show and I knew 10 yards out from a Linn room that it was Linn speakers because it sounded bleached and nasally. If that’s pace and rhythm you can have it. |
Well, that’s pretty definitive! Considering the fact that you are a drummer and (I presume) very familiar with how rhythms "feel" in your body, I don’t feel qualified to challenge you on this. I have noticed over the years that reviews by Brits seem to often mention PRaT. It would be interesting to ask Tarun (A British Audiophile) what it means to him.
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I keep reading words like transient response, time aligned drivers, authenticity, musicality to describe PRaT. Why not just use those words rather than some esoteric acronym? It also seems to be as much a property of the music itself as the system on which it is being played and the listeners connection to the music. It seems to me that any system can be regarded as having these elements if it’s engaging and musical to the person who put it together. So far no one has been able to give a reasonable objective definition of it that folks agree upon and makes sense to the folks trying to understand which says to me that no one really knows what it is. |
@jastralfu Bingo!!! That’s exactly what I’m sayin’. |
Seriously? What could be more essential to the performing arts than pace, rhythm and timing? And what could be more easily comprehensible? Pace is the speed, rhythm is the repetitive beat, timing is the emphasis. Music, stand-up comedy, the stage, film, writing--success in these crafts is largely defined by these three simple but discrete elements. I happen to think that it’s a rather brilliant bit of linguistic compression that captures in one acronym the success or failure of an audio system to convey the essentials of what makes listening to recorded music enjoyable. |
Objectivity is generally in short supply around audio and music. It's all in our heads. But it doesn't seem hard to imagine that some speaker and amp combinations differ in how quickly the drivers respond to transients and how quickly a large diaphragm can reverse direction. It might be measurable but it's certainly audible. I think it's just a term someone coined to describe systems that do it well. |
@dogearedaudio Why is it that people here are having such a hard time defining it? We can define tonality. We can define imaging and 3D soundstage. We can define a speaker’s disappearing act. Seriously? I’m a drummer and if I’m locked in with my bass player the band is on, so pretty sure I get timing, rhythm, and pace. What you’re talking about that should be so easy to hear isn’t so in my book. Do you even play an instrument? |
@soix Yes, I've played instruments, though not very well. But I've been an actor, singer, stage director and audiobook narrator for over 40 years. I certainly know what pace, rhythm and timing mean. They're essential to the work I do every day! I utterly fail to see what it is you want defined. Surely you've played with musicians who can't keep time, or who don't "swing," or who don't convey any nuance or subtlety in their performances. There are audio systems that fail in this regard as well. Whether you've heard them or not I couldn't say. You seem to be highly resistive to the idea that such a thing could exist. I have no idea why. Woolly, sloppy bass in a speaker or amp is simply not going to convey the basic snap of the rhythm properly. If the midrange is bleached out I'm going to miss some of the subtle timings a singer might inject into a performance. I can't understand why this is hard to grasp. |
