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Trade-off between soundstage vs. PRAT

I just received my Musical Fidelity Cd-Pre24 and notice that the soundstage is a little narrower than my previous setup, has obtained more depth. I've read from somewhere which says that upsampling tend to make soundstage narrower but increase depth. I don't know if this is true for most cd player.

Also, players that tend to have large soundstage usually gives up a little in the PRAT department.

Any comments?
andy2
jafox
1,456 posts
 
Please define the following:
Pace
Rhythm
Timing
Seems like only UK products ever get credit for these attributes.
andy2 OP
1,545 posts
 
PRAT actually stands for pace, rhythm, attack and timing.

But I think "timing" covers all others three.

It all has to do with how a speaker handles transient sound. There are usually three things associate with a note being played. First there is an initial attack, then the note lingers a little bit, then slowly decaying. Each speaker handles these differently -- some better than others.
jafox
1,456 posts
 
Yes, I would agree that timing would be fine to define all 3 of these terms. But I hear PRAT describing Linn TTs and Naim electronics frequently here and very rarely other companies.

What Andy describes sounds to me more like harmonic richness, ambience and bloom as he talks about decay of notes. I have heard Naim based systems and they can be phenomenol in terms of musicality, but no matter how good Naim or other SS electronics might be in this regard, there are a number of tube products out there that are in a completely different league in the decay of notes.

I have gone through a number of electronics out there with Magnepan 3 series, Thiel 3.6 and Talon Khorus and all of these speakers have the ability to handle the decay of notes quite well when the electronics are up to the task. Such components as the ARC SP-8 and SP-10 preamps, ARC LS5, BAT 31SE line stages, Aesthetix Io phono stage, ARC VT130 and Wolcott Presence amps are products I have recognized to bring this quality from the music like even the best solid state products simply don't do.....and so many other tubes products do not do very well either.

And I owned the Linn LP12 for 18 years. Based on the cartridge I used determined whether or not I had awesome decays of notes or just mediocre. The Talisman Virtuoso and Shinon Red in the 80s were outstanding here. But others such as the Supex and Benz Glider were only ok. And I have the same experience with the Clearaudio Ref TT now....it really comes down to the cartridge. But the Clearaudio has resolution and freq extension that the Linn never could achieve. So giving all this credit to the Linn for PRAT is ridiculous.

So I wonder why PRAT is used in the UK vs soundstage so frequently used in the US. Clearly timing and soundstage are very different. But soundstage is often described well while PRAT is just thrown out there but not covered.

John
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