What do audiophiles mean when they talk about Pace, Rhythm & Timing?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Gretsch6136, Oct 12, 2017.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US

    This.
     
  2. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    I'm beginning to find this confusing, people who don't know if it's their system or their mental state.

    You press play, sit back and listen to music and I presume as you've upgraded you enjoy the music more.

    Describe it how you want but it's down to how musical is it.

    Confession time, I have/had Linn & Naim gear and known a Naim dealer for 30 years and I've never heard anyone use the acronym PRAT.

    Why is it in HI-FI that you want to have empirical data on the emotional impact of art.
     
  3. Balthazar

    Balthazar Forum Resident

    I don't want empirical data, but I like it when words act as appropriate signifiers of meaning. For instance, I'm not sure of the definition you intend when you say "musical." Yes, I have enjoyed my system more as I've upgraded, but I wouldn't think to call it more musical. So, I guess I'm confused by the idea of ascribing musicality or PRaT to a stereo system or amplifier or speakers or power cable.

    What qualities of a mains cable makes the PRaT?

    Reading that, I took away "more detailed." Is "more detailed" a sign of musicality and PRaT? Seems to fit with what @The FRiNgE wrote.

    BTW, as far as listening to music, it's not either/or with the system and mental state. It's both of them. But, as far as the way people seem to conceptualize and relate their experiences of listening to music, it seems to be predominantly mental state.

    Also, my understanding is that the part of the brain activated when comparing components is largely antithetical to deep immersion and enjoyment of music, so the notion of contemplating how much better one component is at relaying "musicality" or "PRaT" seems contrary to my immediate notion of musicality. Seems more like a recipe for compare and despair. I never think about any of this stuff when I listen to music, but my mental state will affect my ability to enjoy the music. Does anyone posting in this thread take notes while listening to music? I don't, but I see reviewers mention it.
     
    andolink, The FRiNgE and Robert C like this.
  4. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    I'm confused by you not expecting music from your system, that's the emotion how you try and convey that experience to others is were it gets fuzzy.

    I'm not a musician but I can tell when a band is hitting the spot, my remarks about local bands failing to do that will be translated by my friend who is a musician, it the same with systems, it conveys the music and it's emotion or it's HI-FI.
     
  5. RhodesSupremacy

    RhodesSupremacy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Away, India
    Not even the most **** post in this thread!
     
    Bolero likes this.
  6. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Funny, for me, soundstage and imaging are the primary reason I listen to hifi vs. mifi. I can remember the first time I ever heard a pair of speakers deliver a soundstage -- a whole orchestra seemingly detached from the speakers entirely, hovering behind the speakers in space with depth of stage and breadth of stage and localized points where specific instruments were coming from and reverb bounding off concert hall back and side walls: it was a demo of a pair of Rogers LS3/5a's at the old Innovative Audio in Brooklyn Heights, 30 years ago. I'm always listening for how a component effects imaging focus and imaging depth and imaging width, and every component plays a role in that (I also thing noise and getting noise low plays a role in that). So I don't mind reading about imaging because that IS what I care about -- through I kind of roll my eyes when I hear people talking about "soundstage" in pan-potted, recorded-in-iso-booths-with-lots-of-overdubs, or heavy MIDI and sampler driven music having a "soundstage." I kind of thing of that phrase only in terms of classical and some jazz music, or, occasionally some other types of music that are intentionally recorded in such a way as to capture the recording space and the array of instruments in that space at the time of performance. Rock records as a rule, don't have any soundstage.

    To me, the world of audio journalism is a vast wasteland of horrible writing.

    In the heyday of J Gordon Holt and Harry Pearson, the subjectivist, extremely personal, self-focused, character-driven audio review was a alternative in a marketplace that was dominated by the Stereo Review and Consumer Reports type of reporting on audio electronics (even general interest newspapers might write gear reviews). It was quirky, it was sometimes silly, sometimes crazy, sometimes exhilarating, but it was this bracing alternative that asked readers to think differently about audio gear.

    Now it's kind of a received cliche, a formal template that people just fill in the blanks on, a form people repeat because they think that's what they're supposed to do -- the rambling discursive personal lead, the offhand references to friends and family members non of the readers know or care about, the check-box list off cliched audiophile adjectives and descriptions of how familiar recordings sound with a little more of this and a little less of that. And it's an alternative to nothing, instead it's pretty much the only type of audio writing out there and anyone and everyone does it, including 100s of bloggers, so anywhere one turns for audio information these days, regardless of their writing ability or audio knowledge. It's just an echo chamber off cliched descriptors of minute differences; long discursive leads about what the reviewer had for breakfast, or about the reviewer's home or apartment or friends; etc. Not a one of these people are Hunter Thompson or Joan Didion, to name just two really good writers and brilliant stylists of the "new journalism" (which Holt's Stereophile was contemporaneous with the rise of), who could write about themselves and about their subjects at the same time, and provide both insight into their subject and a really good read.

    Art Dudley to me is one of the worst offenders. It seems like every one of his stories begins with a long personal lead not about the subject under review or the topic he's writing about, but about his personal life.

    Here's one recent Dudley lead....and this is all you get on the Stereophile landing page before the click/jump:

    "Even at full strength, my family didn't need 3000-plus square feet of living space, let alone four acres of outdoor frolicking space, much of it wooded. But in 2003 that's precisely what we bought, partly because our deal fell through on another, very different house, partly because living next to a dairy farm was an appealing novelty, and partly because the hill on which the house is poised seemed defensible. On our very first morning in our new home—a Saturday in early June—we awoke to gunfire and puffs of smoke coming from the field below our hill."

    I mean WTF do I care about any of this? And what reason does this give me, a reader interested in learning about audio equipment, to click to read the next graf?

    Here's another "classic" Dudley lead:

    Sometimes I feign interest in living in the Soviet Union of the 1950s and '60s. This happens mostly when I'm shopping for toothpaste at my local supermarket, where the toothpaste aisle is as long as a football field. "I don't want so many choices," I say in my Abe Simpson voice, "because all these choices are stupid. I wish I lived in the USSR: Shopping for toothpaste wouldn't take so long." But I'm only kidding.

    Textbook disposable lead -- I say this but I'm joking so it's no really what I think so throw it away -- again it's all about himself, not his subject, and again, we still don't really know what the hell he's writing about before the jump.

    I think audio reviewing could stand a counter-alternative movement that eschews the use of personal pronouns, relies more heavily on objective data or at least not exclusively on subjectivist listening, and tries to find a new, 21st century language for talking about sound and audio that eschews Holt's glossary. But, there's so little interest in home audio, it's been so completely overwhelmed among consumers by streaming to phones and tablets, that I don't know that there's really a business case for any kind of audio writing anymore.

    But, I've probably ranted on this topic enough over the years on this forum. Probably I should just keep it to myself at this point. I've become one of those cranky old dudes repeating himself on an internet forum. And while we're off on a tangent in re. PRaT, I don't think it's too far off since I think PRaT became a thing in the hands of Linn's marketer and certain reviewers who were Linnies, but here we are 30 years later and not only are people still confused by it, but the term has come to be applied by a new generation of reviewers to all kinds of different gear without much consideration for what it means. It's just part of that received, formal repetition.
     
  7. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member


    If you want to describe what the gear is doing -- and that's the job in a hifi review: to explain the particular piece of gear under review to the reader -- then, you're, the writer's, emotions, aren't really relevant, because they're not part of the gear, and they're not something, I, the reader, am going to get when I buy the piece of gear under review and open the box and plug it in.

    The noise levels of the gear (and a lot of times in listening tests, the presentation of low level inner detail and microdynamics have, I think, a lot to do with noise, even if we don't hear anything as noise per se), the apparent frequency balance and timbral character of a piece of gear if those stya consistent when the gear is used with a variety off other associated equipment, these are the kinds of assessments based on listening that might be useful to a third party. But the emotional response to the music of a reviewer? I can't replicate that at home. And frankly, as a reader, I couldn't care less about it.

    BTW, for me at least, there's no linear relationship between better sound and more emotional impact. I could be listening to a piece of music on car radio in a noisy urban area, or listening to an MP3 on headphones in a noisy gym and the music can have an emotional impact. There's a you-are-there quality of good home hifi that can bring me, as a listener, back to the moment of performance, that I like about hifi that I don't get in those other situations. And an ability to hear the detail of what a musician is doing -- small differences in dynamics and timbre of a drummer's touch on the ride cymbal, say, or similar small expressive shadings in a Heifetz performance, that just get lost in those other kinds of listening. Do they change my emotional response to hearing the music? Sometimes, but like I said not in a linear way -- when I hear that more detailed, focused and revealing presentation of the recording that better fidelity delivers it doesn't necessarily move me more than hearing the music those other ways. The music is always equally "musical."
     
    thrivingonariff and Robert C like this.
  8. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Right. But, of course, listening to music for pleasure, and listening to music as part of the job of writing an equipment review are two different things. When you're having a conversation with someone, you don't take notes. But when you're interviewing someone for an article you've been assigned to write, you surely do.
     
    Robert C and The FRiNgE like this.
  9. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    I don't know why you've brought equipment reviews into the equation but I'd be happy to audition a piece of equipment if the review says it conveys musical emotion. The emotions they're talking about should relate to how it can give the impression of a performance and it's emotional impact.

    I bought my CDP in 2003 and went to listen to the player given good reviews, as you'd like them, couldn't live with any of them, I chose my Meridian, before reviews and I've no idea what they said.

    Audition is the only way to buy a system, trust your own ears, otherwise how can you choose your system?
     
  10. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I brought equipment reviews into the equation because I was responding in that post to the question: "Does anyone posting in this thread take notes while listening to music? I don't, but I see reviewers mention it."

    It's also true of music reviews. You may not sit and take notes when you're listening to music. But if you're assigned to write a music review, you very well might.
     
  11. Chazro

    Chazro Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Palm Bch, Fl.
    In this day and age, auditioning gear is very difficult. As far as reviews go, I believe there is a way to find them beneficial. Instead of trusting a single reviewer (big mistake), it pays to read a consensus of reviews. For instance, I own an Arcam CD23, this player received almost completely positive rave reviews in a number of different publications and online. Same goes for my Music Reference RM9, I've never read a negative word about it anywhere. When a 'group' of independent reviewer's are in agreement about a product, it doesn't take a huge leap of faith to make a decision. I bought my RM9 and CD23 sight unseen and unheard over 10 yrs ago and wouldn't consider replacing either one unless it was absolutely necessary!
     
  12. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    Well as I pointed out I didn't agree with the consensus of great players, although perhaps the Meridian review said it destroyed the competition. I'm surprised you say auditioning equipment is a problem, if I was in the market there's 3 retailers in Greater Manchester who I trust and would be given at least 4 hours to listen.
     
  13. Chazro

    Chazro Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Palm Bch, Fl.
    I'm surprised that yr surprised!;) Surely you realize that most don't live in Greater Manchester. Yr fortunate, in most places, stereo equipment shops are becoming really scarce.
     
  14. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    Just presumed dealer would be in reach of many in the US, I'd certainly spend a weekend away if it was the only way to audition equipment I was interested in.
     
  15. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    For the size of the place, even these days, the UK has a large numbers of specialist Hi-Fi dealers, in comparison to other countries. Greater Manchester seems especially well supported!

    Whereas you wouldn't have to travel too far, for a dealer to be able to demonstrate the "musical" differences a Hi-Fi component can make, unfortunately, in a number of countries, this is either not possible, or a very long distances are involved.
     
  16. Higlander

    Higlander Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Florida, Central

    I read once that there are 4 or 5 variables to determine the validity of something in Hi-Fi or audio reproduction.
    Going from memory....

    1. Is is repeatable?
    2. Is it measurable?
    3. Will it transfer to other listeners?
    4. Can the original listener positively identify under controlled conditions?
    5. Is it part of an actual design process and intentional in nature?

    A great way to evaluate how (truly) valid something is.
     
    chervokas and Robert C like this.
  17. Dream On

    Dream On Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    The issue with that is most reviews are super positive. So it's not hard to find a bunch of reviews for a product that gush about it's performance.

    I think if you can find a reviewer who generally likes the gear you tend to like, their opinions might be relevant. But I tend to think audition in your own room is really the only way to know for certain that you'll like something enough to want to keep it long-term.

    Does saying 'no' to any of those necessarily make something invalid?

    Whether PRaT is in the mind of the listener or not, I do believe that there are systems that emphasize the leading edge of notes, that convey a sense of speed, that are free of resonances, and so on, and that these things contribute to a sound that conveys a feeling of pace, rhythm, and timing that other systems may not convey as strongly. These things might be in the recording but so what? There are many things in the recording. Doesn't mean they are heard on every system or that some systems don't convey them a little more than others.

    I do agree though that reviews should focus more on what is measurable and repeatable. As my first paragraph above says, audition in your own home is really the only way to know if you'll like the sound. Whether Art Dudley (or whoever) believes that a system has PRaT means nothing to me. It's whether I feel it when listening to it in my home that matters. If I was going by most accounts of the Sugden sound I would maybe have avoided a Sugden amp. But I tried it and it sounds very little like how I often see it described. Same with the Audio Space tube amp I owned. Don't expect a syrupy tube like sound just because it has tubes. I mean, I really had to listen for myself to understand. What a tube amp can do well is not often how I would read a tube amp sounds, and until I did hear it in my home it was hard to imagine just based on the accounts of other people.
     
    Randoms likes this.
  18. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    I'm sure we were better served in the mid 80's but it was still difficult to have a dealer where you could compare the equipment you were interested in. I bought my system in 87 and we traveled to Liverpool, York, Oldham and a weekend in Edinburgh. Whilst some of those distances weren't that great, travel time in the UK made it feel like hell, given I was spending somewhere near £12,000, in today's money, it was worth it. Even then a dealer arranged to dem Exposure amps, which he loaned from another UK dealer, as I was traveled out
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2017
    AmericanHIFI and Randoms like this.
  19. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Does studio equipment have PRaT? Asking for a friend.
     
    Randoms likes this.
  20. AmericanHIFI

    AmericanHIFI Long live analog (and current digital).

    Location:
    California
    You nailed it on the head. There's nothing more to say, and musicians know.:agree:
     
    Randoms likes this.
  21. AmericanHIFI

    AmericanHIFI Long live analog (and current digital).

    Location:
    California
    They strive to be as neutral and honest sounding as possible. Some achieve that, some don't, irrespective of price.
     
  22. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Should a hi-fi component strive to this ideal as well?
     
  23. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    That's not even necessarily true. Plenty of studio gear was colored, is colored There are lots of classic old pieces, like some old UREI limiters, or some old phono pres or phono pre board modules like a Neve 1073 phono pre, that people today seek out for studio use because of their characteristic colorations, same thing for a lot of the vintage ribbon mics people like to use today. They're not the most "neutral" or "honest sounding" studio choices at all, they're used because they're not.

    But do me that's not really related at all to this issue of whether or not a piece of home hifi electronic possesses musical characteristics of pace and rhythm, or can change the pace and rhythm of a piece of recorded music (obviously a turntable motor or tape deck motor can effect the pace and rhythm of a piece of music; and DSP can actually manipulate those things).
     
  24. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    I'd say the aim of a piece of kit is to reproduce the best possible recreation of the music. Some of the factors have already been mentioned and given names, many of which I'd say are not universally understood by HI-FI buffs.

    When I audition a system I just listen to the music, how believable it's able to convey the sense of the performance and the emotion, then I may listen for what those cues are.

    PRAT is an alien term but it's OK, if I it refers to the above.

    Perhaps there should be an AGM, so we can thrash out a universally accepted jargon (I'm out!!).
     
  25. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    There were certainly more dealers in the 80s, and it was in the, early 90s that a number went forever, or noticeably changed. But the UK is a relatively small country, and we are talking British products, American products were far more exclusive.

    Jump forward to the current day, and you can see, depending on location, how some British products, would be very difficult to audition, without a very long journey, in America.

    My preference and advice, is always listen for yourself and support a local good dealer, who can demonstrate what we are struggling to explain, or put names to. It is only recently, that it has registered how difficult, or plain impossible this is, in some large countries, or parts of the world.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine