Two terms I don't understand - please explain

Jwglista, I think we agree. I think it's unfortunate that someone coined this phrase and it came into widespread usage. It just confuses many, like our good OP on this thread, and perpetuates the widespread belief that audiophiles are a bunch of tweaks that don't know what they're talking about.

Oh well, windmill wins again...

Dave

"and perpetuates the widespread belief that audiophiles are a bunch of tweaks that don't know what they're talking about."

would that be the part about belt drives not having prat or dvd players that lose the beat?

No further comment... ;-)

JUST FYI- Martin Colloms(Who happens to have an Electro-Acoustics Engineering Degree, as they call them in England, has authored a number of AES papers and books on speaker design,etc) is credited with coining the term, "pace". Here are his views on the topic: (http://www.hificritic.com/downloads/Archive_A7.pdf)

Rodman, thanks for the great link. I think almost all the PRaT or Pace attributes come down to either Timing (as defined in that article) and Dynamics. This still leaves me uncomfortable with either term. It's interesting that neither "Pace" or "PRaT" include a letter for dynamics. That article talks a good bit about the importance of dynamics.

His definition of Timing was particularly lucid and really dealt with the issue of how micro timing sometimes doesn't come thru. The example of the bass player being ahead of the beat (the good ones actually do that by training in certain circumstances) and the inability of a couple of CDPs to reproduce that was right on point.

Dave