Best song for immediate impact when presenting or testing?
I, as most of you, have my regular tunes that I play or listen to when trying out a new system or playing music for friends. My current starter is 'Feels like Rain' by Aaron Neville. It engages me immediately because I love it so, but it is also very well recorded and has a bass voice doing backup which in the right system has a real visceral impact.
I was at an Audio shop recently, listening to my standards, and wanted to show the sales consultant a piece that he might not have heard. I played 'Golden Rust' off the Miles Gurtu album. After about 30 seconds, he pulled out his device and added the song to his favorites. I asked why did he add so quickly, and he said that the opening electronica had a three dimensional stereophonic quality that made a remarkable impression right off the bat. I paraphrase lightly; that was his comment.
What pieces do you play of any genre that have an immediate impact, especially for people listening to a good system for the first time?
Hey Laura- Gregory Porter Just a Little Lovin’- Shelby Lynne River Man- Lee Ritenour New Love- Amos Lee Babylon Sisters- Steely Dan Flamenco Sketches- Miles Davis
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes - Paul Simon Peel me a grape - Diana Krall On the way home- Neil Young Massey Hall anything by Lyle Lovett Factory Girl - Stones
Man, I agree with you 100%. About 20 years before my dad died, He came in to see me a couple times when I was separated from my wife for a couple years. I went out and bought a barber shop quartet album because my dad used to sing in one long ago and I thought he would love it. He was beginning to have hearing problems at that point, but he sat there and sang along with the tunes and got this look in his eye of love, the remembering the times look, and the outward appreciation he showed me was way more important than how great the recording was. I then played a Virgil Fox Direct to Disc organ record. He went nuts as He felt and heard the big pipe organ just like he was in his church and the pipe organ started to play. This recording IS great, but the music itself was WAY more important than the recording quality.
I have a good friend that can play most anything with his Spotify and Roon but he usually chooses stuff that he knows I like to play at his house. I need to return to the guy who also does that most of the time.
I usually start with David Manley’s "Toolbox" (VTL 008). First track side 1 "The Loft". It has everything that I find difficult for a system to reproduce well: Piano, kick-drum, Tenor sax and flute. Within the first minute, I can tell approx. where a system is relative to what I like. This CD does not have female vocals so I go elsewhere for that.
The CD is very well-recorded (all tube chain, Manley enhanced 1/2 tape, Manley preamps etc.., 20-bit A to D converter, Precision Mastering digital master) Has a depth to the soundstage that is missing from most CD’s I listen to.
For my unwashed guests, I have them sit in my parlor, break out the candles and put on a 180 gram Living Stereo copy of Elvis is Back...most say they thought he was in the room...
Midnight Rambler on SACD (could be the dirtiest Blues ever recorded?). Journey - Don't Stop Believing on SACD (Jazz drumming undertones in a Rock structured song).
I must say Planet Caravan by Pantera is a good test. You can hear palm strikes on the drums and finger slides on the guitar strings. The old standard though was always Time by Pink Floyd for the clocks and the drums.
I don’t like to play for immediate impact. That is cheap and tawdry and right off the bat encourages people in all the basest aspects of listening. Of course this is what everyone does in demo’s. Then they wonder why there are no women audiophiles, why so many constantly churn components (looking for the next immediate impact), why so few audiophiles have any real listening skills.
What I like to do instead is play something very simple and quiet like......
Quoted because I couldn’t possibly agree more.
When I have guests with no previous experience with or interest in HiFi, I put on whatever music I think they might like. Generally they’ll never have heard a halfway decent system in their life, so pretty much anything will make an impact.
If I want to show off what the system can actually do and have guest who’ll know what they’re hearing, I put on "In darknesse let mee dwell " from " A Candle in the Dark " by the Newberry Consort, "Church Windows" by Respighi, "The Great Gate of Kiev" by Mussorgsky, a couple of songs from "Early Hours" by Eleanor McEvoy, something from Lisa Gerrard’s solo album or maybe Holly Cole’s album "Temptation". Depends what music they’re into.
For me there are many songs that have immediate impact, a lot of them are well recorded (eg. Dire Strait Songs, Pink Floyd,) so they will sound good on a very expensive system and equally sound good on an under £1000 system, so I purposefully do not use such songs to test the system. However there are other pieces of music (Classical, Rock and other genre of music) which have immediate impact which are not so straight forward in recordings, or are slightly more complicated eg voices in a choir, ensemble where individuals sing different words overlapping each over. Such recordings for me tells me a little more how the sytem in question copes with the recording. However there are to immediate impact songs I play to test system which are Dick Dale - Misirlou and Rolling Stones - Painted It Black.
I don't like to play for immediate impact. That is cheap and tawdry and right off the bat encourages people in all the basest aspects of listening. Of course this is what everyone does in demo's. Then they wonder why there are no women audiophiles, why so many constantly churn components (looking for the next immediate impact), why so few audiophiles have any real listening skills.
What I like to do instead is play something very simple and quiet like Springsteen Highway 29, just his familiar voice and guitar, or Doug MacLeod, or Linda Ronstadt (anything from her 3 albums with Nelson Riddle) the kind of thing that draws the listener in. Try it some time.
But does it impress? Oh yeah. One guy, his wife came up to me with this look of incredulity on her face, obviously emotionally moved, and what did she say? "I feel like I could listen to this all night!" Because instead of being barraged, aurally assaulted, she was actually drawn in and enjoying the music. She never even knew that was possible.
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