Is the Teres a

Thanks, Psychic, and thanks Doug: I may try Mylar tape on my Ariston RD11S, which like the Linn majors on PRaT while sacrifing information. But with excellent PRaT and a gorgeous sound (Grado-esque midrange), and let's face it, quite good detail retrieval when not compared directly to the rising stars, I could easily live with it as my sole choice. I keep it because when it plays, I forget about audio (blessed relief!). I may even retire to it when I tire of the astonishing information-retrieval and dynamics and bass of my Lencos ;-) Then, I will try that mylar...

Again, sweet music to my ears to read so much about the importance of PRaT, which is what drew me into this discussion. Long life to Art Dudley to keep focussing our attention on it, sloppy set-up or no!

Happy listening!

Hi Doug,

I mounted the Triplanar this evening, but it was getting too late to fit a cartridge. Tomorrow night, I wear my shipping department hat, but may well fit a cartridge and take her for a spin.

I need to comment about the much overused (and overrated) PRaT. I think one needs to consider it in the same manner as one does soundstaging. By this I mean as an incidental result and not as a goal. If you do everything correctly, you'll get PRaT and soundstaging. There's nothing wrong with this. If you design for it, you're headed down a path of ruin. Similarly, if you buy with either of these sonic attributes at the top of your checklist, you'll soon grow dissatisfied and become a regular seller in the 'gon.

Go for tone, go for low noise floor, go for dynamics, but please ... for your own psychological well being, let the PRaT and soundstaging just "happen"

PRaT is one of those characteristics that can be faked by having a hot upper midrange (can you spell Linn?) which emphasizes the leading edge or instrumental attacks. Certainly, you can kill PRaT with excessive resonance, and I'm not suggesting that all components with a "hot" tonal balance will have PRaT. You can certainly can enhance it with frequency response anomalies however.

Soundstaging is similar in this respect - a big bass and boosted upper frequencies can give you an exaggerated impression of space. True soundstaging comes from components with a low noise floor which are phase correct - to the extent this is possible.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

PRaT follow-up ...

Of course I was presuming tables with speed stability and immunity to varying stylus drag modulating their speed.

My focus was on 'tables which cannot have the kind of speed stability that a Teres, Galibier, Redpoint and Verdier have ... suspended decks with rubber belts.

From this perspective, their PRaT is a lie. If you can live with it, then be my guest.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

PRaT is one of those characteristics that can be faked by having a hot upper midrange (can you spell Linn?) which emphasizes the leading edge or instrumental attacks. Certainly, you can kill PRaT with excessive resonance, and I'm not suggesting that all components with a "hot" tonal balance will have PRaT. You can certainly can enhance it with frequency response anomalies however.

As I was packing for my move I decided to hook up the little Rat Shack AV-7 speakers RX8man gave me. I used my mother's 23 yr old NAD receiver with the infamous AIWA changer, a Soundstream/Krell DAC-1 and some basic filters. The system was cooking!!! It had really good beat, congas sounded intense and the bass was there, giving great boogie factor. Then I decided to clean the unit, put some Sil-clear in the fuse holders and when I plugged it back the R channel blew up (I thought everything was dry, oh well...). Point is I got my vintage Yamaha A-1 dual mono integrated out of the box and when hooked up it didn't have the boogie factor of the NAD. The Yamaha is more neutral, quieter, more detailed, more musical, so I figured the NAD's PRAT was a trick...exaggerating the leading edge of the conga's freq range (upper midrange) and the string bass frequencies(they call that acoustically correct tone controls or something).

Very well.