Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - Tarkus/Trilogy MFSL 200g Vinyl Rip 96/24 Genesis Firth of Fifth - Selling England By The Pound Quiex 200g Vinyl Rip 96/24 Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush/Tony Levin - Don't Give Up SACD - for both Bass & Vocal Sibilances Certain Diana Krall stuff for vocal Sibilances The usual Audiophile Stuff but great music none the less Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem, Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold, anything Patricia Barber And to watch for Cone Excursion - 1812 Telarc SACD Cannon shots ! |
A Great topic, Among others, iI use Herbie Hancock, River The Joni letters track two Edith and the Kingpin, featuring Tina Turner, Wayne Shorter etc, beautifully recorded with many complex layers , subtle bass it really sorts out how well my speakers are placed and how well a streamer can recreate the various instruments timbre and placement and clarity. Infact the whole album is good for this but track 2 is my favourite I guess thats why the albumn won the top Grammy award in 2007 |
+1 Jan Hammer/Jeff beck song. Great choice. Walk on the Wild Side, Lou Reed. (Background singers!) Poinciana by Keith Jarrett Trio, Live in Paris (drums first, then the most beautiful sounding piano—great for comparing DACs) Follow Me Home, Dire Straits (soundstage test for ocean waves, then bongos, drums, then bass and various guitars...and then vocals). This track will mesmerize you on a good system. |
+1 Jan Hammer/Jeff beck song. Great choice. Walk on the Wild Side, Lou Reed. (Background singers!) Poinciana by Keith Jarrett Trio, Live in Paris (drums first, then the most beautiful sounding piano—great for comparing DACs) Follow Me Home, Dire Straits (soundstage test for ocean waves, then bongos, drums, then bass and various guitars...and then vocals). This track will mesmerize you on a good system. |
An Analogue Productions sampler disc and Columbia House vol#1 sampler are the first ones.There's a little bit of everything on those.Next up after the new thing settles in is some live recorded rock,Who,Stones,Zeppelin,Tull.Can the system untangle the instruments and vocals without being stressed?Finally a recording of my son singing and playing guitar needs to be accurate. |
Sir Adrian Boult conducting The New Philharmonia Orchestra in Holst's The Planets, on E.M.I. Trevor Pinnock performing numerous Rameau Harpsichord works, on CRD Records (UK). The Missing Linc by Lincoln Mayorga And Friends, The Sheffield Drum Record, the Sheffield Track Record. Direct-to-disc. A Meeting By The River by Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt, on Water Lily Records. The first two Paul Simon albums. |
My general advice is to pick songs that: 1) You know really well 2)That consistently provide a visceral reaction (goosebumps, adrenaline rush or an out of body experience, etc). 3) Has an aspect that you think your current speakers don't handle well (piano, female vocals, drums and/or cymbals, etc). A few songs that meet some of the above criteria for me are: DADA: "Dorina" DIXIE DREGS: "Ice Cakes" EMMYLOU HARRIS & LINDA RONSTADT: "Sweetspot" VICTOR KRAUSE: "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" PREFAB SPROUT: "Faron Young" STRANGLERS: "European Female" |
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. 👍 |
Boy, where to begin? Band of Horses - Detlef Schrempf Bryan Savage - Last Summer Dire Straits - You and Your Friend Steely Dan - Jack of Speed Beck - The Golden Age Yello, Heidy Happy - Kiss in Blue Sophie Zelmani - Why Malia, Boris Blank - Magnetic Lines Joe Sample - The Road Less Traveled Snowy White, The White Flames - Midnight Blues BTO - Blue Collar (Trial by Fire version) Russ Freeman - East River Drive Gerald Albright - Winelight Dave Koz - Anything’s Possible Gregg Karukas - Girl in the Red Dress Let me know if you’d like more. 😀 ENJOY!!! |
I burned the following on CD for auditioning systems since I know the tunes well and it tests various aspects I’m interested in... Shirley Horn - The Music That Makes Me Dance Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem Michael Franks - Dragonfly Summer Dianne Reeves - Never Too Far Fourplay - 101 Eastbound Steely Dan - Jack of Speed Grace Jones- Don't Cry - It's Only The Rhythm Larry Carlton & Lee Ritenour - Take That Herbie Hancock - Butterfly Lee Ritenour - Boss City Dave Brubeck - Take Five Miles Davis - So What Buddy Guy - Sweet Black Angel (Black Angel Blues) Cassandra Wilson - A Little Warm Death |
There are a lot of great songs here -- I just threw a couple up without much bothering to say *why* I use them. Without saying why, it just seems like I'm telling you about my favorite songs, and that wasn't the OP's gist. So, here's a good one, with a "why": https://www.amazon.com/Recat/dp/B005J57SK6 "Recat" is on Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer's album, Re: ECM. It is a weird electronic track which begins with hypnotic drums and little electronic pulses, some thrown all the way behind your right and left ears; soon, a melody begins to emerge, almost as if it was underwater, far away — it sounds like a merry-go-around melody, looping, getting closer. The whole thing is rhythmic, bass-y, with a very interesting sound stage that pops in front and around you, like fireworks. I tried it on different speakers and amps and while it's always fun to listen to, when the gear is good, you'll forget yourself. |
thank you for this post. lots of stuff to check out. Queen: love of my life, live in Argentina 1977 Joe Cocker : The Letter, live at the fillmore east, 1970 Sade: is it a crime. Haunt me Enya: Watermark album Ella Fitzgerald: everything when she was young(er) Paul Simon: me and julio Itzhak Perlman : smile, from modern times 1936 (i think) of course there's more. all taken to a new level with my new Lumin T2, through Legacy Sig SE's, (not just for ht ) love em ! |
