To "test drive speakers" I use:
REW + calibrated UMIK-1 and play a frequency sweep @ 75 dB. (Maybe not a favourite "song")😂
Repositioning speakers/listening position and then we know what the room boundaries and the weakness/strength that the combination has and can offer.
Of course it is also fun to do the in the reverse order. Listening first then confirm what you heard by measurements results.
Anyway it will speed up your learning curve as a listener.
It is like in the analogue camera days. When you had 24/36 frames and each image cost money in film and development of paper copies.
So it could take weeks to have the results in hand. After so long time you do not remember what settings you had when you took the image..
Today you immediately get feedback and can repositioning, fix light, sharpness depth and so on. So your learning curve is greatly reduced with instant feedback.
If we measure we "see" were the walls/ceiling/floor are and interact from different listening positions.
Something that I know in and out. Like Adel 25 album. There is track:
1. "hello" tired of that track when you hear it everywhere..
2. "send my love" starts with she is saying at ~<40 dB in the left speaker "just the guitar, thank you" then you know that right and left channels in the system is wired correctly. You should just be able to hear her saying it low in volume and clearly. If you can't distinguish exactly what she's saying. Then something is not as good as it could be. The voice is a rather large reverberating space choir is making a wide soundstage with them between the speaker and center on the left and right side. The autistic guitar is played with fingers in extreme right and left side. The drum beat is firm and stable in the center.
3. "I miss you" starts with a little distant floating choir and the same with the piano down left from the center. Then a string type of bass that is first come to the left and the last pluck is to the right. Then it sounds almost like a cymbals that emerge towards you from the center and transform to a nice effect of Adele make a inhalation going down to the left where the piano was and a emerge X over the sound stage towards the upper right corner with a increased reverberation (Can you get that then you are doing something right).
Now the we have drums with its four strikes on four different drums, and that during the whole track so we have a long time to listen on them. We listen to if we can distinguish that that it is different drums and not one and same tone.. good for bass definition/resolution.
4. "when we were young" you can concentrate on here voice that is sometimes little bit rasping when she is at the slower paces. (Here the stylus setup is reviling if you play LP)
5. "Remedy" Very intimate and forward presentation of her voice. And a a clean track with only a piano. You should clearly hear that it is a grand piano. And that she is near the microphone when she closes her lips and just "mmmm", "mmm" 🤪
6. "water under the bridge" (first track on side B) a very energetic in it's reverberation presentation. It shall be getting involving and toe tapping on this track. If not..
7. "river lea" her voice picks up in the second verse. Here they have put the choir performances in different spots all over during the track and playing around with reverberation
8. "love in the dark" here we go down in tempo and the grand piano choir and violinists are doing great work again and framing in this gorgeous vocalist (with help of reverberation)
9. Here we have acustic guitar that and Adele doing a great intro. We have also in the beginning a secondary voice that float back and forth between right and left speaker in a big reverberating space.
A theme is emerging on side B with more intimate songs that do not use that bombastic many instruments. Same goes for next song:
10. "All I Ask" Adel and that grand piano again. It is just to enjoy. Here is very important to get all the stylus settings right otherwise it will punish you with that her voice will sound to "nosely".
She is singing rather close to the "edge" of that..
11. "Sweetest Devotion" A great finish up track on the album. All the instruments is back bass, drums and hi hats. Even a electric guitar. Here you can imagine how the compressors in the studio needed to put into use..
And of course it is good to know that during the album recoding the used two drummers and also digital drums. So some of the drumming is going lower than a normal acustic drumset. So you may miss some low tones on some book shelfs. So we can listen to how low the speakers go.
On the flip side is I am not really sure always what is analog/digital drum att some times.
But we can not get everything like great effects and all acustic performance.. ..the importance is that we like it and everything else is secondary.
So if you are familiar with something that you like. As in the write-up above then that what is good to use to test speaker/system. 👍
