What are people talking about when they talk about PRaT?

[Mart68]

It's a term that the English audiophile press started using in the 70s and 80s, when Japanese turntables and amps were significantly better engineered than anything coming out of England, or, ahem, Scotland.

By sheer coincidence, all the Japanese gear of that era were completely deficient in all three attributes, and the British gear was astonishingly proficient.

The Japanese superiority, with the wave of a pen-shaped wand, disappeared!

If one had bothered to graph every piece of expensive gear from that era on a plot of performance vs PRaT, odds are that an almost perfect inverse correlation would have been observed.

cheers

Hah! That is all true but have to say the original Linn Sondek did add some sort of bass lift or peak in that propelled rock music along pretty well. The modern ones don't have it and sound like every other belt drive clunker.

The contemporary Jap decks sounded a bit too plain by direct comparison to the original LP12. I know exactly why some people thought it was 'better' or 'superior'. The classical enthusiasts were more your Jap deck market then.

Anyway I think that might have been the original stimulus for the PRaT concept.

 

[CapMan]

Yeah, this is undoubted top notch drumming skill, but I'm talking something more tribal, a steady beating rhythm that gets into your very heart and soul and makes you sway to it at the very least.

One that might bridge this gap is Ginger Baker playing his solo's in 'Toad,' where he does his pyrotechnics but with a solid back beat behind them.

Not quite samba , but Tony Allen (Nigerian drummer) created the Aftobeat. He was Fela Kuti’s drummer. If you love samba - you may love Afrobeat!!

 

[Galliardist]

Yeah, this is undoubted top notch drumming skill, but I'm talking something more tribal, a steady beating rhythm that gets into your very heart and soul and makes you sway to it at the very least.

One that might bridge this gap is Ginger Baker playing his solo's in 'Toad,' where he does his pyrotechnics but with a solid back beat behind them.

Sorry, I was far too busy listening to the construction of that solo to remember to sway to it. I actually found it quite cerebral!

 

[CapMan]

Same as ever: This is a sloppy and inefficient way to communicate something meaningful about sound reproduction, even if some (humourous) soul attempted to provide a roadmap for non-engineers

I also don’t think great ‘feel’ is the preserve of engineers - it is created by great musicians and loved by listeners of music.

No amount of engineering can restore the feel of a piece of music. Indeed, engineers who quantise drum parts and use auto tune to try and perfect something are just as likely to strip it of everything that makes it musicial.

 

[DSJR]

Sorry, I was far too busy listening to the construction of that solo to remember to sway to it. I actually found it quite cerebral!

I did say it might be a kind-of bridge to what I was going on about - wish I hadn't now

Whatever, it's the music that should have all these idiotic terms, not the gear attempting to reproduce it and I wonder if the originators of these terms actually use the gear to enjoy music through...

 

[jtavy]

Pace, Rhythm and Timing. So, I have seen this term around for some years, and I think that Pace and Timing maybe relate to perceived transient response. I am not going to work too hard to related subjective language to measurements, that's neither my problem nor my responsibility.

However, am really left scratching my head is when audiophiles refer to the effects of audio equipment on Rhythm. It's not just in the context of PRaT. Sometimes you see subjective reviewers talk about speakers or amps as if they did something to the rhythm of the music itself.

Do they actually mean the rhythmic content of a song sounds different to them on different gear?

To me this means that they are not spending time listening to the loudspeaker performance, but that they are totally lost in the music and the speaker is just the transducer. Hopefully the lack of coloration would lead one to just enjoy the music and not worry of think about the gear involved. Sometimes a badly engineered recording might make you think that a speaker is not performing well, so you must insure you listen to well recorded music so you know that on other music it is NOT the gear causing your displeasure.

 

[kemmler3D]

To me this means that they are not spending time listening to the loudspeaker performance, but that they are totally lost in the music and the speaker is just the transducer. Hopefully the lack of coloration would lead one to just enjoy the music and not worry of think about the gear involved. Sometimes a badly engineered recording might make you think that a speaker is not performing well, so you must insure you listen to well recorded music so you know that on other music it is NOT the gear causing your displeasure.

Hmm, fair enough, but I think often you'll hear people say that "the speaker disappears" to describe this feeling. I guess your response goes to show why measurements are important, because non-quantitative terminology often gets interpreted differently by different people, but 3dB is 3dB everywhere.

 

[Waxx]

This weekend i was at a small reggae festival in Belgium where this vintage stack (=soundsystem), driven by tube amps was used one day in the afternoon. It's owned by the french crew Rootsworers" (based in Dunkerque) and all the dj's that afternoon played old roots reggae and dub. PRAT was all over the place, even in a heavy summerstorm the people stayed on the open air dancefloor dancing. It was not the sound that did that, it was the music and the performances of the dj crews. The sound sounded very vintage, but in a good way and perfectly fitted the music. But it's in no way hifi to the ASR standards (and it's not intended that way). But it was a great afternoon thanks to the dj's Rootsworkers (FR), Ras Digby (UK) and Unification (BE) that played on this stack in between great concerts (on a normal pa system). The stack just accomodated this, but it's the music played by the dj's and their performance that do that, not the stack.

(pictures are taken from the facebook page of the Rootsworkers)