I was recently auditioning speakers for my HT, so this is still fresh in my mind. I took a mix of songs and genres for sampling, with a track or two of blues, jazz, classical, rock, some instrumental. I also threw in couple of live recording tracks and one track that I know is highly strenuous on the drivers like track 5 from Telarc's Fantastic Journey by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops orchestra (Through the Black Hole). This last track really tests the system in a unique way because it has some quite moments, a good deal of different sound effects (keyboard strokes, jet engines, etc.), and as they go through the black hole it has some of the lowest frequency tones I have ever heard.
I usually don't listen the whole the thing, and I usually don't listen to every track either. Most of the time I just ended up listening to a minute or two of several of the tracks, until I found the speakers that were the finalists for me. Then I took more time to listen and actually spent about an hour just moving around the room and listening to the sound from different parts of the room, off and on axis. The thing that is distracting is the darn salesmen usually don't know when to shut up and just let the speakers do the talking.
