PRAT is neither pretentious audiophile nonsense nor meaningless jargon. It's real.
Back in the early days of digital, all CD players more or less had problems with rhythm & timing, compared to most turntables. The music just didn't 'rock' or 'swing', there was no 'foot tapping' quality to the music. The worst offenders perhaps were the first cheap 'bitstream' players from the early Nineties. The problem was so bad that people in the high-end store in the Netherlands, where I was at the time, told me that many customers bought Marantz CD 80 players despite their harsh highs, because at least they were not too far behind in rhythmic quality compared to their Linn turntables.
An audio buddy of mine and me often used the track 'Josie' by Steely Dan,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg9RyiPKhx8
in order to gauge rhythm performance. On many players or systems the 'swinging' rhythm fell apart, degrading into an uninvolving, dull mess.
(But it was not just digital: we also noticed a breakdown of rhythm on 'Josie' upon switching of an interconnect!)
There is a great 1992 article by Peter van Willenswaard in Stereophile,
Pace, Rhythm, & Dynamics: one listener's lament
on this topic, which was in my view spot on, dealing with CD players of the day.
It is an accompanying article to
Pace, Rhythm, & Dynamics
written by Martin Colloms, which in my view is one of the most fundamentally important articles about high fidelity reproduction ever written (not the most important, for sure).
I can say that my first three CD players/combos (Cambridge CD3, Meridian 208, Meridian 602/606) all had some rhythm problems. My next combo, Wadia 8/12 from 1993 was good on the swing in jazz, but only with good power conditioning. It still was only decent on rock. The first DAC that I had that really could rock was the Berkeley Alpha DAC 2, but even it is bettered rhythmically by my current Schiit Yggdrasil DAC.
As good as the Berkeley is, on Art Blakey's famous drum solo "Freedom Rider" the Yggdrasil DAC is rhythmically even more assured, and in some passages the Berkeley sounds rhythmically somewhat 'confused' in comparison.
Overall though I had no complaints about the Berkeley on rhythm, compared to great turntables, and I would say that the Yggdrasil DAC is one of the rhythmically best performers is that I have heard, regardless if digital or analog. Digital has come a long way, for sure.
***
Of course, amps and speakers can be culprits as well, as also outlined in the article by Martin Colloms. I once auditioned a speaker (on my Berkeley DAC as the source) which made the incredible rhythm on Elvis' "(You're the) Devil in Disguise" sound as if it was played by a mediocre, drunken wedding band. What a mess!