"Pace", it's importance for enjoyment?

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
>

Maybe to some extent, Redkiwi is correct, that all components effects pace or prat.. blah. However, I do believe pace is more of an issue when it comes to digital front ends. When a turn table is out of tune, or our LPs are warped, or our tape head isn't clean, it doesn't alter the sound as much as when digital front ends are interfered. Sure the sound is warbled, but the bass doesn't become punchy or muddy and the treble doesn't become sibilant.. etc. According to my experience, my nak and luxman tape players on dolby C with a tdk metal tape sounds more dynamic and smoother than any CD player I've heard up until a few years ago. My stereo system doesn't nearly need as much tweaking when usng analog front ends, like my LP player. I still enjoy playing LPs, although I stopped buying LPs back in '89. But, there is something about it that just sounds right. I never had to worry about pace when using analog front ends: I just have to make sure my tape head and needle are clean. Like Sean, I prefer analog sounding systems, so I purchased a tube dac. Sure, the sound is closer to what I get from my LP, but I still prefer the sound coming out of my analog sources, even my tuner, compared to my transport/dac.

On a side note, my first introduction to digital sound were sony discmans. I purchased the second generation discman and a few there after. The first one I got sounded the best, the sweetest, and newer ones sucked cuz of lower build quality. I even had a Luxman first generation CD player. Despite those CD players using old technology, I never had to worry about pace or anything other than keeping my discs clean. Why are newer digital systems harder to use properly?

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.