Testing Material- What do you play to test new setups?

[ZeosPantera]

I am curious as to what you guys all throw on when you want to test your, or someone elses HT.

I have to believe the MOVIES(Scenes) I turn to are

-Saving Private Ryan (Beach Landing)
-Reign of Fire (Attack in Tomato Field)
-Watchmen (Opening Fight)
-Jurassic Park (T-Rex Escape)

As for MUSIC I will only test with FLAC or original CD's Preferably Flac/Wav out of my Archos 604's DAC.

My be all End all of Quality testing is the Cowboy Bebop OST Box Set (Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts). A perfectly mixed and mastered setup of jazz instrument, vocals and excellent synth pieces. The 8 minute long Live Piano solo is one of the most demanding tracks I can put a setup through due to the slight background hiss that can be distracting on some systems. As for richness the Female Vocal track "Rain" with its pipe organ brings a tear to my eye everytime on my setup. Link to MP3 Stream of rain http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Rain_Demo_Version_/1898433


Other good Albums are
-The Battlestar Galactics season 3 OST
-The John Williams Suites
-The Prodigy

Note: I prefer listening to music in Neo 6 DTS Music mode if available.

 

[GlocksRock]

I have some demo dvd's, but for blu ray I use Live Free of Die Hard, Transformers, Ratatouille, Bolt, anything with great pq and aq.

 

[FNG212]

Movies:

The Core (scene 9 and 14: mega storms destroy Rome and the Golden Gate bridge; pretty insane bass)
Blackhawk Down: Irene (Helicopter Scene, super insane bass)
Master and Commander: First battle scene, I think scene two or end of scene 1
BattleStar: Galactica -- Scene 8/9 (Brace for Impact) Season 1 Disc 1 (great dialog and whole range of sound effects)

Music: (All FLAC encodes from my laptop)
Tool - Schism, Laturalus (Laturalus album)
Vivaldi
Phil Collins - In the air tonight (shut up, I like the drums)
Eric Clapton

 

[Hicks]

Steely Dan Aja or Gaucho, immaculately produced and I know exactly how it's supposed to sound.

I also use the Master and Commander battle scene at the beginning too and lately the freeway scene toward the end of Transformers.

 

[lsiberian]

Transformers, Mozart and Bach. Toss in some MXPX.

 

[kev1702]

Spider Man 3, THX Audio Test DVD, Master and Commander.

 

[lsiberian]

What's with all this FLAC?

I honestly can't tell the difference on most music between mp3 and cd. That's a knock on the recording industry these days I think these days.

But 40% compression an lossless is nice.

 

[DTS]

The "Dora" scene in Finding Nemo is excellent for chasing down rattles in the House. Played it over and over cushioning and padding trickets and wall hangings when I first got my Ultra.