"Pace", it's importance for enjoyment?

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.

Hi Red!
Yes, simplicity in that it uses a single midrange driver without networks! If the impulse response is at least decent you have a chance of getting reasonable sound.
When asked what loudspeakers impressed him the most, the ex head designer at the old AR (now at EAR pro sound) related how shocked he was to hear a reasonably-optimized enclosure housing a simple full-range Radio Shack 5" driver back in the 80s! He had heard a male voice call out, and thinking there was someone behind him, turned around to "see" this
simple box sounding so utterly natural. He then went on to explain his design preference for midrange drivers with big voice coils that could be run wide. His work with tweaked Morel midranges resulted in AR's last 3-ways before their bustup and emigration from the Right Coast to the Left! (Think it was called the AR-1 or something).
OTOH I wonder if presence-region and treble detail of flat freq response systems simply "grabs" the attention of the ear-brain's high sensitivity, somehow masking the ease of
PRaT-ful boogying. Nah...that can't be right: the ARCAM 9 can sound clean and clear as a whistle, but dances with two left feat! My old Rotel's dirty as hell, but keeps time like
a Third Reich brownshirt brigade...or Charlie Watts!

Thanks to all for the input. I attended a 3 day Jazz fest in Iowa City over the weekend,..hot as hell, but great music, food, friends, fun..and plenty of pace and PRAT.

Let me toss out a couple of observations:

1) PRAT is almost alway good on boom boxes and car radios and the like, typically better than on high end systems

2) Good PRAT, such as on a car radio, often strikes me as BETTER than the real thing itself.

These observations lead me to suspect that PRAT may be BS in some way (some have claimed it is a distortion). I'm not making that claim (please don't jump down my throat), I just want to consider these things in conversation. --Dan

"Pace" to me seems to be slowing the music down, making it more distinct and listenable...but actually the "speed" is the same! My SFCD1 excellas in this quality.