5 steps in developing hearing

I prefer Rhythm and Pace… as PRaT sounds more like brat, but just a different term for what is probably the most difficult to directly focus your minds eye on (all right, in this case ear on), and yet is probably the most important sonic parameter to a great sounding musical system.

The OP brings it up in number 4 because unlike detail,  imaging, or slam you do not sense it directionally… as in right there in a certain place in the sound field are the cymbals and they have a certain sonic characteristic, or the bass… easy to focus your attention on.

PRaT is a characteristic of the whole system…. Of the music coming out. You cannot sense it from listening to the snare drum relative to the kick drum. It is the timing of all the music and effects you very subconsciously. It is what makes you tap your foot, or want to sway with the music. It is not what sparks your mind’s eye to listen to the whack of a drumstick or bowing of a cello string. It is what sucks you into the music and establishes that primal connection.

While you cannot be missing all the other good attributes of a system, this is the one that truly makes a system enthralling and engaging. This is the thing that makes it hard to drag yourself away from the system after hours of listening. So, if you can walk away from your system after playing and album or are ever fatigued, this is probably what you are missing and it is worth investing a lot of time trying to learn how to perceive it and get it into your system. There are a tremendous amount of high end equipment that is virtually devoid of it.

I’ve never heard a system with strong PRaT attributes while playing music I dislike.

Coincidence?

There are many people who find great PRaT in car stereos and/or smartphones.

Sliding scale?

Terminology can become problematic when it’s concocted beyond a basis of real-world meaning.

Conspicuously absent is the first thing I listen for, and has been since I was 18 years old: How closely reproduced vocals approach the sound of real life ones. I recorded my 3-year-old’s voice with a small capsule condenser mic plugged into a Revox A77, and use that recording to evaluate the sound of loudspeakers, a brutal test.

I also recorded the sound of my Gretsch drumset (early-70’s "stop sign" badge) and Paiste 602 cymbals---the sounds of which I am of course intimately familiar---with a pair of the same mic. I can actually strike the drums and cymbals as the recording plays on speakers, and get an instant comparison between the sound of the drums and cymbals and how any given loudspeaker reproduces the recording of them. Another brutally revealing test.

I first saw the terms "accurate timbre" and "vowel coloration" in the early-1970’s writings of J. Gordon Holt in his Stereophile Magazine (he was it’s owner and sole reviewer), and instantly adopted those parameters (the presence of the former, the absence of the latter) as the most important in the reproduction of music. FAR more important than, say, soundstaging.

I was also drawn to the writings of Art Dudley, from whom I added "color saturation" and "tonal density" to my hi-fi vocabulary/lexicon. Art referred to imaging (in all it’s diverse forms) as "parlour tricks".😊 Harry Pearson placed soundstaging at just about the top of his priority list.

@cdc When I stopped building my own speakers in the ‘70’s until I began climbing back into this hobby upon my retirement (in my 70’s), I would have placed myself at the first stage, all speakers needed to be full range, the bigger the woofer, the better. 
Three years on, I would place myself at stage three. I’ve explored several different sets of speakers and amps, sources, in three different rooms. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard two systems where one had PRaT and one didn’t, but some sound better than others, and I’m beginning to make distinctions between components that sound ‘right’ to me and those which do not. I am looking for a sound stage in which the speakers disappear (some have a hard time doing that), enough imaging that I can identify different instruments within the sound stage, and notes that sound as if they came from an instrument I can identify [double-bass, guitar, piano, etc.], and, of course vocals that are clear. Some recording techniques or mastering methods obscure some of these qualities, but I just wait for the better recordings to appear on the stream, or next disk [CD or Vinyl] that I put on. (I hate it when the instruments drown out the voice, as happens with some female vocalists, especially.)
 

Now, as @ghdprentice describes PRaT, I can easily relate to ‘not wanting to drag myself away from my system,’ but, as others allude to, only when it’s playing music that I like. If my system can’t do that, something is wrong and I’m busy working on it, or saving up to replace what I’ve identified as the weak link in the chain. It’s been that way for three years now, and the acquiring is finally slowing down, but only after spending about 12 times what I had initially estimated the cost to be [of course, that expense was spread out over what is now four separate systems, plus a few ‘spare’ parts, but still . . ..]

I’ve been in level 4 and 5 for decades. Oh and I have heard the word prat before, but have definitely never heard Prat before.