@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 . . ..]