"Pace", it's importance for enjoyment?

Hi Yoh. We may of course be talking at cross-purposes, and you mean something different when you say pace. Your last post suggests to me that you mean a wider issue of "musicality", which I suggest includes PRAT, but also includes smoothness and naturalness.

But I would like to point out that there are PRAT differences between analogue front ends too.

One famous example was a dozen or so years ago when TAS Editor Harry Pearson raved about the sound of the new SOTA turntable and its virtues over the Linn LP12. It took him some years to realise his mistake and re-rate the Linn highly. He did so when he "discovered" the concept of transparency, but some of us felt he finally discovered pace. The LP12 had vastly better pace than the SOTA and was much more fun to listen to - albeit with a mid-bass hump and weak bottom octave. Harry's mantra had led him down a blind alley.

Arguably the superior pace, but poorer bass performance could be attributed to the much flimsier engineering in the LP12. While the engineering of the SOTA was more impressive, its structure stored too much energy. This is not to say the LP12 was perfect - it could have done with more rigid chassis and sub-chassis - but it was at least light. Some turntables today still suffer from the "more mass is better" approach.

There are also PRAT differences between CD technologies. Some still swear that the best PRAT from CDs comes from the simplest technology in some of the earliest players - the 16 bit, non-over-sampled players. Have a look at the Sakura Systems DAC as an example (kind of) of this.

Red Kiwi, Yupz, you are right that I do associate prat with musicality. I do believe reproduction of "music" manifests only when sound waves arriving at your ears are as close to exactness as compared to live sound, highs and lows arriving at the same time,etc. This might be semantics, but I believe pace is a resulting effect of properly reproduced sound in manners I've just described. I wouldn't go as far to say that analogue sources don't have problem with prat, and I haven't. But, according to my experience, more tweaking of the listening room, speaker positioning, component vibration and isolation/placement is necessary when using digital sources to combat foes of pace. I am listening to my Luxman tuner at the moment, and I have never had cognition of the component, for it's a "turn on and forget" device. But, my CAL dac/trans and my previous digital sources were never "turn on and forget" (except for my first generation Luxman which was a 16bit 4xOS i believe). With newer digital sources, I always try to find errors in the cd, always fidgeting with speaker placement etc. and so forth because, somehow, I am never satisfied with the sound. As I described, I experienced more "musicality" with my analogue sources, what I meant to say is they are probably less susceptible to "pace busters" (for lack of a better word = X).

Also, two component that always increased pace in any system I've used or worked with are the Meridian 518 and the Velodyne ULD series subwoofers. In short, the 518 reshapes the sound coming out of a dac, and I've had great results with it. I am going to buy one after I can afford one. The ULD is a downward firing sub, and an extremely musical sub. As Subaruguru explained in his post, allowing frequency to roll off instead of cut off by a cross over will sound more natural. And ULD uses a crossover with 12db separation while most modern subs uses 36dbs, perhaps for home theater purposes. Anyways, I won't get into jitter or such, for I am not sure how these components affect psychodynamics that allowed me to arrive at more "pace", but they sure did!!

PRAT is imperative for anything resembling an illusion of being transported to the recording venue....Venue information seems to come primarily from below 100hz and if you ain't got no bass, you ain't got no space seems to apply to PRAT......Most systems don't image below 100hz, but those that do have PRAT sure do.....As far as PRAT is concerned as respects analog versus digital the digital has better focus in the bass I imagine due to better separation than any phono cartridge.....The analog and digital sound very similar here, but both are hot rodded about as far as anyone could imagine over the past six years or so....

I can't help but be struck by the variance in definition of PRAT. For me it is about how notes start and stop. If I could simplify for a moment and refer to a note in three parts - its attack, its body and its decay. A system with poor pacing has one or other of two problems. The first is the sense that the start of a note is slow - ie. there is a lack of attack. The second is that the body of the note seems to start before the attack - of course this is nonsense, but it is a feeling that is real and I have experienced it - a feeling that the note is there before the initial attack, but clearly just the ear/brain getting confused for some reason. Rhythm is what you feel, the sense of the music bouncing along, or a sense of swing - you either feel it or you don't. Timing is about events like cymbal taps and bass strings being plucked occurring in a way that indicates the players do actually know how to play together in the same groove. A system's timing is good when the instrumentalists seem to be playing well together.

I suspect the three different concepts are all just about the same issue - reproducing the sounds with no time-based smearing of the sounds - thereby leaving all the timing clues, that are critical to feeling immersed in the music (as opposed to just the sound), intact.

One of the telling things to try is to listen to some music on your system, and then on a really cheap system - like your son's boom-box - and just try sinking into the music rather than the sound. What can be startling is that some transistor radios have better PRAT than some very high-end systems. One might postulate that the great PRAT of the transistor radio is due to its simplicity.