Music test list

[Hlam]

The Wind That Shakes The Barley of the cd: Dead Can Dance - Into The Labyrinth.
This is an amazing example of Liza Gerrard's vocal range.
This track was recorded inside a church and the ambiance of the building comes through on a good set of speakers.

 

[D Murphy]

Nice list. Lots of those are also some of my favorites to listen to.

I do agree with @shadyJ about adding some orchestral stuff. Some of those tracks are VERY demanding on a system. I always include some when doing demos.

There are quite a few orchestral selections on my demo. People might even enjoy a couple of them.

 

[panteragstk]

There are quite a few orchestral selections on my demo. People might even enjoy a couple of them.

I'm willing to bet you are correct. I've always been a fan of orchestral music and am always looking for something new.

 

[NINaudio]

Nice list. Lots of those are also some of my favorites to listen to.

I do agree with @shadyJ about adding some orchestral stuff. Some of those tracks are VERY demanding on a system. I always include some when doing demos.

I also include electronic music of some kind, but it's usually Pink Floyd. Sometimes some 90's techno.

Another track I really like just because of the subtlety is Tin Pan Alley by Stevie Ray Vaughan. If you have a good 2ch setup you can place the instruments easily and the effect is VERY cool with that track.

NIN and Tool will ALWAYS be on my test track list. SO many good tracks. Especially NIN as their recording quality is always excellent.

I have some Beethoven I could use: maybe monlight sonata, fur elise, and choral fantasy

I think about half my tracks are electronic (industrial music). I have some hymnal singing over industrial music that also includes male spoken word and another track like that with female vocals. I may have to throw them on there as well.

 

[panteragstk]

I have some Beethoven I could use: maybe monlight sonata, fur elise, and choral fantasy

I think about half my tracks are electronic (industrial music). I have some hymnal singing over industrial music that also includes male spoken word and another track like that with female vocals. I may have to throw them on there as well.

Named kid #1 after Fur Elise. She likes to listen to it because of that. Try to expose my kids to as much different stuff as possible. It's pretty fun to see what they like and don't like.

 

[ryanosaur]

If I recall correctly, I stayed away from most Rock... In the sense that I didn't load up on screamin' guitars or heavy drum sets, or Robert Plant type vocals.
I took 5 tracks for my primary cuts... anything beyond that was icing on the cake:
I took a Jazz cut, Evolution from Joe Lovano's From The Soul.
I used Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, starting with the last 30 seconds of the Introduction through roughly the first minute of Spring Round Dance... about 6 minutes of this Ballet, performed by MTT and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Fiona Apple, Paper Bag from When the Pawn...
Love Letter, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, No More Shall We Part (and if needed, Tori Amos' Northern Lad, From the Choir Girl Hotel)
Lou Reed, Egg Cream, from Set The Twilight Reeling

Each of these were picked because I not only new them well, but to expose flaws in the speakers.
Saxophone, Bass, Piano, and drums. No amplification. Exceptional production.
6 minutes of orchestral music that goes from solo instrument to full orchestra and back to quietude... ranging from strong percussion hits and significant variance in passages exposing different tone and timbre.
Fioana's vocals over the building instrumentation
Nick cave to expose if the male vocal got "chesty." And his Piano. The strings up high and the bass line help stretch the sound a bit... do they stay in balance, do the strings get "whiny?" (Tori's Piano work is a little more broad and dynamic... her vocals push into a range that can come across as strident. Yes there's still bass and drums, but I found that it doesn't get in the way here, in fact, some of her Bosie overlaps the bass line which is nice to hear how the two sounds balance out in the reproduction.)
Lou Reed: I love Lou's Guitar work, and the sounds he creates. Egg Cream is such a dense layer of great overdriven guitar sound with the band and his vocals... My personal tribute to my love of rock, and to make certain the speakers I chose could make some noise.

A couple Bonus cuts: Gravediggaz, Twelve Jewelz, a RZA cut that bumps, but it's all about his vocals, the articulation and clarity of which are all important.
And my nod to trully manufactured music: Gorillaz, 19/2000 [Jungle Fresh] from Laika Come Home. This was all about the Bass. Can the speaker survive?

 

[snakeeyes]

If I recall correctly, I stayed away from most Rock... In the sense that I didn't load up on screamin' guitars or heavy drum sets, or Robert Plant type vocals.
I took 5 tracks for my primary cuts... anything beyond that was icing on the cake:
I took a Jazz cut, Evolution from Joe Lovano's From The Soul.
I used Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, starting with the last 30 seconds of the Introduction through roughly the first minute of Spring Round Dance... about 6 minutes of this Ballet, performed by MTT and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Fiona Apple, Paper Bag from When the Pawn...
Love Letter, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, No More Shall We Part (and if needed, Tori Amos' Northern Lad, From the Choir Girl Hotel)
Lou Reed, Egg Cream, from Set The Twilight Reeling

Each of these were picked because I not only new them well, but to expose flaws in the speakers.
Saxophone, Bass, Piano, and drums. No amplification. Exceptional production.
6 minutes of orchestral music that goes from solo instrument to full orchestra and back to quietude... ranging from strong percussion hits and significant variance in passages exposing different tone and timbre.
Fioana's vocals over the building instrumentation
Nick cave to expose if the male vocal got "chesty." And his Piano. The strings up high and the bass line help stretch the sound a bit... do they stay in balance, do the strings get "whiny?" (Tori's Piano work is a little more broad and dynamic... her vocals push into a range that can come across as strident. Yes there's still bass and drums, but I found that it doesn't get in the way here, in fact, some of her Bosie overlaps the bass line which is nice to hear how the two sounds balance out in the reproduction.)
Lou Reed: I love Lou's Guitar work, and the sounds he creates. Egg Cream is such a dense layer of great overdriven guitar sound with the band and his vocals... My personal tribute to my love of rock, and to make certain the speakers I chose could make some noise.

A couple Bonus cuts: Gravediggaz, Twelve Jewelz, a RZA cut that bumps, but it's all about his vocals, the articulation and clarity of which are all important.
And my nod to trully manufactured music: Gorillaz, 19/2000 [Jungle Fresh] from Laika Come Home. This was all about the Bass. Can the speaker survive?

I like your strategy In terms of dissecting the speakers. Very scientific.

But maybe it’s fun for one or two rocking tracks though to make sure all is well. Or is that going to bring too much emotion into the equation?

 

[John Parks]

Named kid #1 after Fur Elise. She likes to listen to it because of that. Try to expose my kids to as much different stuff as possible. It's pretty fun to see what they like and don't like.

What kind of name is Fur for a little girl? You're a monster!

 

[ryanosaur]

I like your strategy In terms of dissecting the speakers. Very scientific.

But maybe it’s fun for one or two rocking tracks though to make sure all is well. Or is that going to bring too much emotion into the equation?

Oh, I played, too. But after. Once I felt comfortable that the speakers were holding up under scrutiny, I dug deeper into my iPod and had some fun.
Dunno if emotion is the possible problem, but not challenging the speakers to play exposing tracks is. I coulda played any Zeppelin or Hendrix, the Pixies, or just 3 different Nick Cave albums... but what would that have taught me regarding the purpose of the examination itself?
I did play some poorly produced stuff, too; to hear what those non-audiophile cuts would sound like. After all, my entire library was CD and lossy downloads. I’m glad to have been introduced to Tidal, for example, but I’m not going back through my thousand CDs and ripping them again at high bit rates to make certain I got everything I could out of them.

 

[Gmoney]

Most if not all Pop, Rock, Soft rock has a Lot of Reverb recorded into the “Sound” of the recording.
Like ShadyJ said in his post, Find Contemporary or Orchestra recordings those Usually are Reverb free in the recordings. Rock, Especially Pop music recordings have way to much Recording studio influence in them. The crap that’s put out in the Music industry today, like umm Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and so on Is Crap!

 

[John Parks]

Most if not all Pop, Rock, Soft rock has a Lot of Reverb recorded into the “Sound” of the recording.
Like ShadyJ said in his post, Find Contemporary or Orchestra recordings those Usually are Reverb free in the recordings. Rock, Especially Pop music recordings have way to much Recording studio influence in them. The crap that’s put out in the Music industry today, like umm Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and so on Is Crap!

The CRAP is CRAP? Pretty strong words there buddy!

 

[Gmoney]

The CRAP is CRAP? Pretty strong words there buddy!

Well sure they are very easy on the eye, well not really crappie how about they just all sound the same. The Female artists of today really don’t have much Musical range in the voice for me. All high pitch screaming. I have to say there really are just a few who have a Talented voice and Taylor Swift Beyoncé and Katy Perry just aren’t very good. Here’s one you don’t hear much about these day’s SADE side by side would blow all three out the water on a stage.

 

[shadyJ]

I have some Beethoven I could use: maybe monlight sonata, fur elise, and choral fantasy

I think about half my tracks are electronic (industrial music). I have some hymnal singing over industrial music that also includes male spoken word and another track like that with female vocals. I may have to throw them on there as well.

There are many, many great orchestral recordings you can use for this purpose, and they don't all have to be classical. Think of many of the great film soundtracks, for example: Jerry Goldsmith, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Elliot Goldenthal, etc. One of my go-to discs for evaluating a loudspeaker is the music score from the film Amadeus, that is something I think everyone can enjoy.

 

[panteragstk]

What kind of name is Fur for a little girl? You're a monster!

Meh. She's good with it.

 

[John Parks]

There are many, many great orchestral recordings you can use for this purpose, and they don't all have to be classical. Think of many of the great film soundtracks, for example: Jerry Goldsmith, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Elliot Goldenthal, etc. One of my go-to discs for evaluating a loudspeaker is the music score from the film Amadeus, that is something I think everyone can enjoy.

I love Weird Al! or were you talking about:

Kidding! The Amadeus soundtrack is awesome - especially the SACD release!

Fantastic movie as well!

 

[Edgar Betancourt]

My 2 cents.
I would add some Tidal tracks:
Don Mcleans American Pie album
Jesus Christ Superstar 20th aniversary
The new Abbey Road release
Pentatonix PTX
Chesky's ultimate demonstration disc

All of these are state of the art recordings of amazing performances with a variety of genres. They will clearly highlight the differences no matter how subtle amongst any speaker.
Other highly recommended classics of audiophile testing, if you can find them, are Don Dorsey's Bachbusters and Beethoven or Bust from Telarc. They will exercise any speaker from the lowest to the highest register with gusto. Probably some of the recordings with the largest dynamic range ever created. I blew up a pair of JBL woofers with it, they literally ruptured the voice coils! (So beware!!!)

 

[davidscott]

Joni Mitchel and Joan Biaz as well as Sade for female vocals.
Listen to Carey from Blue Joni Mitchell. Great acoustic guitar and female vocals.

 

[Paudio]

The new Carmen Gomes recording;
DXD studio master; Carmen Gomes Inc. Up Jumped The Devil; Discovering the Music of Blues Legend Robert Johnson
starts out with a low 27.5hz A on the down tuned double bass. The album is incredibly well recorded and an absolute joy to listen to as well.
Highly recommended.

 

[davidscott]

dave brubeck take 5 - Search Videos

www.bing.com

Some nice Jazz. This song will sound awesome on a good system.

 

[Mark E. Long]

I’d give the first two or three albums of Of Monsters and Men a listen very cool Icelandic folk band . Grace Potter , Adel very clean recordings incredible range . Marc Cohn live 04/05 concert probably the best live recording I’ve herd .