how do you gauge and judge "timing"?

I dont tap my foot listening Bach works...

I can tap my foot listening "Hey Jude" of the Beatles...

 The term PRAT is dated to turntable marketing linked to the music pop growing listeners crowd of the era...

If a system/room is acoustically controlled you will tap your feet with the beatles because all balanced acoustics factors implied will make it possible...

 but a bad set of speakers in a Hippie living room will do the same but for others reasons ...

 Acoustics explain everything in audio but not by  the objectivist meaningless stance which erased our subjective hearing ...

Acoustics at least  put the problem in front of us...And gave us the tools to seize it in an optimal yet imperfect way (we dont understand hearing yet and more most confuse  Fourier theory applied in design with  the way we must use Fourier tools  relatively to our hearing own time domain ) 

 

Is "prat" not a good thing anymore?

Out Damn PRAT!

For example, if i want a certain high sensitivity 3 way speaker connected to a sub and make it very PRATty, this is all the stuff i had to do...took a fair amount of measuring and listening to get there (some notes i took)...

 

Mating the bass driver and sub

18db/oct butterworth 80 hz high pass for the bass driver

48 db/oct butterworth   100 hz   low pass 

Delay bass driver by 0.56 ms

low --> mid

250hz low pass
18 db butterworth  

250 hz high pass
18 db butterworth  

Drop mid driver level by 6db

 

mid ---> high

1700hz low pass
18db butterworth   low pass

1900 high pass
24 db linkwitz   high pass
Drop tweeter level by: -4.6db
delay tweeter: 0.25 ms
invert phase

 

Do you think you can achieve such precision, fine tune things passively somehow? (not electronically)...with some air core inductors, caps, crap and what not? Alas, you can’t. Oh, you got very high quality caps and drivers or what not? did that help too much? it didn’t...

I need to get to a certain delay/offset...if i have to do it passively, now, there will be some geometric changes made to the cabinet, where the driver’s mounted, physcial offsets, or other design features, etc, which can in turn mess up other things...So, it is always a compromise.

In summary, many purist guys shall suffer through some PRATless speakers....High quality drivers and passive components and a glossy cabinet finish meant nothing if you still can’t execute it...If you want to play it to the bone, there are some fairly accurate parameters that can get him there for some drivers and a cabinet, but.....when he’s pure, he won’t have much speaker PRAT.... He has to rely on a high quality speaker designer and manufacturer for some high quality drivers, nevertheless.

It’s mostly the speakers that killed it for y’all....and room acoustics

The other electronics are not that big a deal (amps, dacs, etc).....any fairly competent manufacturer can get you there...the rest is up to the musician, whether he made some PRATty music, to begin with or not.... Hence, It can also be a guy’s poor taste in music and PRATless musicians that can kill the PRAT for him. Diana Krall and Norah Jones are such boring PRAT killers... no PRAT for you from Diana...

 

 

@simonmoon  wrote

 

The only timing issues I believe are audible, are drivers being badly misaligned, causing step response, phase and time arrival problems. But these would relate to transient response, imaging/soundstage, vertical/horizontal off axis response issues. 

@avanti1960  wrote

e, timing and rhythm as well as systems that were too over the top frenetic sounding there are definite electronic attributes that cause this.  Keep in mind the above was true for each system with the same recording.  

Has nothing to do with speaker driver alignment.  

There's a lot that needs to get right for good timing.

First speaker polarity,  check it with at test track like Phase Test by Bunker Analog.

The driver alignment and crossover of speakers introduce timing errors that you are stuck with and kill timing. 

With anything digital the filter (s) are what kill timing, typically they use either linear (phase) filters which generate pre-ringing that is really confusing to the perception of harmonics or minimum phase filters that cause frequency dependent phase shifts like speakers (slightly less confusing).  

If sound arrives with the frequency's out of phase its a bothersome timing smear, a pre-ring is a nasty time smear.

When the timing is right it triggers a subconscious relaxation of the mind as it can enjoy the music vs dealing with interpreting confusing un-natural sound properties.