how do you gauge and judge "timing"?

Am currently experiencing this with a power cable upgrade on my Jay’s transport.  The new cable offers better detail/separation and a more balanced tonality (the old one had too much lower-mid/upper-bass emphasis) but I also experience it as "slower" than its predecessor.

What really confounds me -- I only notice this on some CDs!  It will come as no surprise to anyone that when I reached out to the  manufacturer they said that there is no accounting for such differences in terms of engineering; it’s purely a subjective perceptual phenomena.

With the new cable, my body is responding differently to the same music. I used to constantly "drum" along with music with my right hand on the arm of my listening chair. I couldn’t help it. Now, with the new cable, the "drumming impulse" has shifted to my right foot and I feel the rhythmic aspect more inside my body, as opposed to my hand. In fact, my hand no longer moves at all! 

As mentioned, some CDs do seem to "drag" a bit, as if the drummer didn’t get enough sleep before the performance/recording session. I’ve noticed this tends to occur with music at slower tempos. So perhaps the old cable was creating an impression that everything was faster than it is?  

I haven’t experienced anything like this, before and have no idea what might be causing it. It’s certainly not expectation bias. I never would’ve imagined such a thing was even possible. 

. In a broader sense, timing in acoustics relates to the duration of sounds and the time intervals between them, which are critical for clarity, intelligibility, and overall sound quality» 

"Timing" is an acoustics concepts , it can refer also to time domain analysis ...

time to google the stereophile glossary, timing The apparent instrumental ensemble (synchronism) of a performance, which is affected by system speed. See "articulation," "rhythm," "pace."

There. reading that sure helped me. I interpret it to suggest a smooth transition between drivers with a reasonably even in room tonal balance.

Snappy snare drum and fast bass drum. Doesn’t get lost during fast passages. I don’t know but that’s what I think of. 

Rolling tubes taught me a lot about PRAT - when it's there and when not and the question "why" which was never very clearly answered. It is the manipulation of seeming imperfections into something unexpectedly dancing and beautiful that is the nectar of audiophilia. In trying to enliven recorded music we get a little peek into what the musicians themselves were doing with their instruments and what the recording engineers played with albeit on a tiny scale, but that doesn't make it any less intriguing.