Most Challenging CD


What is the CD that most puts your system to task in your collection?

My best is, Tchaikovsky "The Nutcracker," by the Kirov Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev. This CD has it all, huge bass passages, giant crescendos, sharp horns and interwoven dynamics.

Yes, I know, there are lots of CDs that show all these attributes. There is one thing on this CD that I have never heard on any other, a real loud gun shot.

Sure, some 1812 Overture discs have real cannon fire. They just aren't as powerful as the gun shot on this Nutcracker disc. This report is a CRACKPOW!!!!!!!!

Ok, what do you have that tests your system like no other? I am not really interested in test discs. I have those and they aren't as good, besides being boring.
muralman1

Showing 4 responses by magfan

Gentlemen,
No need to use language like THAT, above.

I just had breakfast and my stomach knotted up. 'bout lost it.
The usual Spam Omelet with Wonder Bread toast.
Audiofeil,
With All Due Respect, the thread is about challenging for your stereo to play back not a challenge to LISTEN to! Good answer, though!

I had a lunatic neighbor a LONG time ago who would stay up late talking to himself and listening to recordings of TRAINS. I moved ASAP and didn't look back.
Beethoven's 'Wellington's Victor' has plenty of gunshots...mass musket fire and also a bunch of 12 pounders firing various charge levels.

The initial cannon shot at the start of the battle is brutal.

This is also a Telarc Disk.

I have plenty of disks which, however, are MORE challenging for what they DO NOT have rather than what they DO.
I bought the Wellington's Victory disk because the original piece of music had been composed for a music playing machine....a really....really big music box, as it were. The music survives, the machine was never successful.
I put the disk on a buddies stereo...with then common 12" 3-way ported speakers from RSL, a Southern California company which made it own line of pretty good speakers. JBL copies.....
We were out front playing Frisbee when the first shot hit. My buddy went pale and bolted for the house to turn it down. It was so loud I thought the woofer cone would have been launched across the room, connected back the the speaker with a little curly-cue of wire.
I felt bad for a second, until I remembered some of the nasty stuff he had done to MY stereo over the years!