"Pace", it's importance for enjoyment?

hey, i would like to add my two cents worth. what is high end audio all about? coming from an epistimological stand point, we are only happy when we live with harmony in our universe, both tangible and intangible. we strive to live in harmony, so we make sense of the world, making tangibles understandable emperically and intangibles understandable abstractly. What does this all mean? We, audiophiles, strive to reproduce sounds as faithful to the original as possible, for, we believe, purest reproduction of sound is the only way to enjoy music, one thing that brings harmony to our lives. In our quest, we try to understand the factors that allow us to faithfully reproduce sound, such as physics and electrical engineering, all of which I am ignorant of. But, if your like me, we strive to come to a faithful reproduction of sound through experimentation between different hardware and cables, hoping to find that magical synergy. And what is that magical synergy? Is it bloated bass? sibilant highs? these are all different, to each our own, according to our personal bias. But, if your transcendental, like me, I do believe there is a rhythm, a beat, that strings all organisms in our harmonic universe, and perhaps, this "pace", is this rhythm that the lucky few audiophiles are able to reproduce.

A friend of mine just asked me waht "pace" is. I tried to explain that its subjective, but its universally agreeable. When audiophiles listen to a correctly set up system, we first notice a "pace" presence, and then we get analytical about other factors such as soundstage and detail. But before we get analytical, subjective about the sound, we will concur with the pace. My friend then asked me how pace comes about. I believe it was easier to explain to her house pace is interupted: frequencies of current are not transmitted "harmoniously". Somehow, different frequencies might be disrupted by emi, rfi, vibration, static, different material of inductions, etc so on, tainting the faithful reproduction of sound. She didn't really understand me, so I made up an analogy. If there were ten flutist, and one flutist was out of tune with the others, then the music being produced would be ruined by that one bad flutist. She answered that this is a perception of harmony, rather than pace, which is really true, but, I explained, not in term of stereos. When we talk about pace, we're talking about this snap of things being in place, more than just accurate an tempo or melody. Ok, I am going to invest in some asc tubetraps, sonex room treatments, and those ceramic cable elevators. No emi, echo or rfi is going to get in the way between me and my pace.

Lack of PRAT is what leads to dissatisfied audiophiles. Seeking more detail, more bass, more soundstage, smoother highs, all that stuff, would not drive us to distraction so much if our systems could just "boogie down" regardless of that other stuff - the music would take over.

I believe all components can affect PRAT, as can the quality of the power coming through the wall. There are lots of components that exhibit good PRAT, but much more that don't and so it is just a matter of learning to listen for it.

Dekay raises a very important point as regards vibration. Poor vibration isolation will mean the structure stores energy and releases it slowly, cuasing a smearing of impulses in the time domain. This can destroy PRAT, because our sense of PRAT is incredibly sensitive to very small errors in timing cues.

I have no idea really, but suspect that the PRAT issues with digital are more likely due to phase errors caused in DACs and digital filters than by jitter errors, but that jitter errors can also have an effect, particularly in the rhythmic cues in the upper bass.

If you have ever fiddled with your system and finally hit that point where you feel you have lots of detail, neutrality, dynamics and a decent soundstage - only to find the result boring. Then you have probably not attended to the PRAT issue.

look, whatjd (stupid name, imo), if pace weren't important, why would there be so many manufacturers of pacemakers? duh!

Redkiwi, thanks for briefly summing up what all of my rambling couldn't make clear. Sean
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