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System-Buster CDs

What CDs do you use to test whether a system is accurate? I don't mean those CDs that make your system sound really good, but rather the CDs you use to test new systems/components, the ones that make all but the very best systems sound like crap.

For example: My all-time favorite system-buster is track 4 from the Sigur Ros "white" cd (sorry, there doesn't appear to be a name or any writing to help identify it; most of the packaging and the cd itself are basically a grayish-white). The bass content on this track is both very low and enormously powerful, though the recording is dense with sound from all registers. I've taken it to various high-end dealers, and either (i) the bass booms like a bad automobile sub-woofer that you can hear from blocks away, or (ii) most of the bass content is just missing. Most systems just can't sort it out.

Another favorite is track 3 of Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa, which consists of 12 cellos playing different lines. Most systems put this out as horrific screeching.

Another one I like is track 4 from John Renbourn's Sir John Alot, with three recorders (or similar instruments) playing at the same time. The amount of distortion that comes out of most systems makes this track nearly unlistenable! (One manufacturer took the cd off after five seconds, put it away, and said the recording was clearly defective.)

So: What CD's do you use to sort out the wheat from the chaff?
jimjoyce25

Showing 1 response by jeromedny

jeromedny
61 posts
 
I am not in the habit of testing frequently; I have what I like and can't afford anymore. But, to see what my system can do, these are some of my go-to's:

John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Digital remaster - this brings a fast changing range of tone's and paces, and, as a jazz fan, it is my benchmark

Billy Taylor's "Ten Fingers, One Voice" - all piano solo - I've read that a piano is the hardest instrument for a speaker to reproduce. This is a great collection, with lots of keyboard runs, as well as some very slow-paced pieces. THis one in particular I like to listen to what it sounds like from a different room.

a Sarah McLachlin cd of my wife's - voice, the other hardest instrument to reproduce. this one has both of them.

Joni Mitchell's Blue (this replaced Jewel's "Pieces of You") THis is all about the voice.

Led Zepplin's "How the West Was One", specifically "Moby DIck", John Bonham's 19 minute drum solo, guess you can figure that one.
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