What songs do you use to test HiFi speakers/amps/headphones?

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duotoneduotone Frets: 971
edited July 2016 in Music
Found this list recently with a bit of a description of what to listen out for. http://gearpatrol.com/2015/06/03/best-hi-fi-headphone-setups/.  With a Spotify link to the playlist.

It got me thinking about what types of music/albums do you use for putting potential new purchases to the test.

Btw the tracks they recommended in the link are;

1. The Three Degrees, Maybe – A great range of female vocals and great horns.

2. Bahamas, Lost in the Light – Male vocals. The back up singers have a great sound. In the first verse the back up singers haven’t kicked in yet, at least that you can hear on most systems. If you listen carefully they’re just very low in the mix. Great signal-to-noise test. 

3. Michael Jackson, Man in the Mirror / Pink Floyd, Money – Channel separation – Both these tracks have bits where you hear hard left/right pans. If there’s poor channel separation they will kind of float around the middle of the sound stage, however, in a system with great channel separation you’ll hear the sounds appear on the hard left or right of the sound stage. 

4. Buddy Guy, Thank Me Someday – Vocal track and electric guitar – In the intro to the song, Buddy is playing his guitar. It’s sounding rich. Just before he starts to sing you can hear the engineer fade in Buddy’s vocal track. An audible hiss is introduced into the mix. If your system has a poor signal-to-noise you won’t hear the track fade in.

5. Mos Def, Ms. Fat Booty – If you need to test mid bass this is the track.

6. Warren G, Regulate – This track highlights deep bass.

7. Gavin Bryars, Man in a Room Gambling – Strings – An incredibly natural recording of strings, and male vocals. Look for the presence of the man narrating the piece — he should sound like he’s directly in front of you.

8. Beck, Morning – A gigantic track.

9. Jack Garratt, The Love You’re Given – Reverse Bass notes demonstrate system control; look for how how “muddy” it sounds. There are a slew of interesting sounds in this track, difficult for many systems to execute accurately along with a sound stage with sounds that move around subtly.

10. Cowboy Junkies, Misguided Angel – The absolute purist recording for this genre of music. The album was recorded at a church in Toronto, Canada with the band playing live off the floor into one stereo microphone and recording straight to tape. 

11. BONUS: The Band featuring The Staple Singers, The Weight – The organs, a range of male and female vocals, the clapping near the end, and the glorious way it was all mixed together.


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Comments

  • barry2tonebarry2tone Frets: 212
    edited July 2016
    Craig Armstrong - Weather Storm.  Great track I've worn thin with repetition.  
     
    - kick drum under the quiet intro arpeggio tells how wet/dry the bass is
    - piano, pub or grand?
     - and whether hairs on the back of the neck respond to the crunch/dissolve.
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  • richardhomerrichardhomer Frets: 24793
    The first Blue Nile record 'A Walk Across the Rooftops'. It's beautifully recorded and has all sorts of subtleties which good equipment reveals. 
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  • SporkySporky Frets: 27569
    For installed sound systems I always liked 65daysofstatic's Prisms - very, very deep bass, sudden shifts in dynamics, lots of little ticky noises. Really shows up bad subwoofers. A bit of Kings of Convenience for male vocals, usually some Gorecki for orchestral (really thick).
    "[Sporky] brings a certain vibe and dignity to the forum."
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  • sweepysweepy Frets: 4158
    Talk Talk, Colour of Spring
    Lou Teed, Walk on the Wild side, when the girls backing vocals come in they should run their fingers around your neck and you just melt, well that's what it sounds like on a Linn setup :)
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  • english_bobenglish_bob Frets: 5128
    Surely testing with music you'd never heard before some guy off the internet recommended it is a non-starter. What you need is the music that you know intimately.

    If the system you're listening to brings out all the details you know should be there, it's good. At least as good as whatever you're used to listening on. 

    If it brings out details you didn't know were there, it's even better.

    Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.

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  • SporkySporky Frets: 27569
    Surely testing with music you'd never heard before some guy off the internet recommended it is a non-starter. What you need is the music that you know intimately. 
    Yeahno; I agree entirely that you need to know the music you're using to test with, but it's still useful to have suggestions.
    "[Sporky] brings a certain vibe and dignity to the forum."
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  • impmannimpmann Frets: 12641
    Talk Talk - Colour of Spring
    Thomas Dolby - The Flat Earth
    Jimi Hendrix & Band of Gypsies

    The remastered version of BoG actually sounds like the band playing in your lounge... its uncanny hearing Jimi's breath on the mic windscreen, the mains hum from the amps, the drums are just... incredible and the bass is just rock solid and grooving. Its my fave Jimi album and Dem Changes shows what an incredible and tight rythmn player he was. And Machine Gun is one of the most intense performances ever commited to tape.

    Never Ever Bloody Anything Ever.

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  • TheMarlinTheMarlin Frets: 7743
    Eric Clapton unplugged MTV thing. 

    George Michael - Listen Without Prejudice. 
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  • Winny_PoohWinny_Pooh Frets: 7730
    edited July 2016
    Clarity - Diana Krall (Al Schmidt)
    Lows & stereo spread - Missy Elliott's Get your freak on. 
    All roundness - Peter Gabriel's Growing up (Tchad Blake) or Fiona Apple's Mistake & On the bound (Rich Costey) 
    Loud Rock - Audioslave's Show me how to live (Rich Costey) or Kings of Leon's Crawl (Jacquire King)
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  • MossMoss Frets: 2409
    Can't Do Without You by Caribou works well for me
    Stop crying, start buying
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  • duotoneduotone Frets: 971
    Thanks all!  Just listening to A Walk Across The Rooftops now.
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  • RockerRocker Frets: 4942
    This question has been done to death on hundreds of Hi-Fi forums.  One answer is to listen to forum 'approved' music, Diana Krall, anything from the Chesky label, Folk Singer by Muddy Waters, Japanese pressings of Kind of Blue and so on. The problem with this approach is that the forums and your hi-fi system are effectively limiting your listening to a small confined choice of music.

    I see it differently.  Music is words and sounds put together with emotion.  Sounds, even top quality Hi-Fi sounds,  without emotion, are no better than noise.  When listening ignore elements like bass extension, but listen for the emotion the reality of the performance.  A lot of processed music is totally devoid of feelings, no system on earth can rescue this kind of music.  It is and always will be noise.

    Listen to the music you like.  Find the sound level that makes the music on the disk 'happen'.  You bought the system, it is yours!  Use it to play your music.  If it sounds good to you, it is good.  No matter what an unknown keyboard warrior might write.
    Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]

    Nil Satis Nisi Optimum

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  • John_PJohn_P Frets: 2744
    I disagree - of course you want to listen to music you enjoy and know well but being aware of reference tracks that have particular details that get lost on inferior systems is really helpful imo.        They aren't the whole story but they can help highlight the differences between systems.  
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  • english_bobenglish_bob Frets: 5128
    John_P said:
    I disagree - of course you want to listen to music you enjoy and know well but being aware of reference tracks that have particular details that get lost on inferior systems is really helpful imo.        They aren't the whole story but they can help highlight the differences between systems.  
    I get that. I suppose if you're going to drop a wad of cash on an upmarket hi-fi system rather than a £100 boom box from Argos you want to know where your money is going, so having somebody show you how a particular characteristic of a certain piece of music should sound on a good system and how a less-good one does it wrong is useful. Once you've heard it on some audiophile-approved-but-dull-as-shit record you don't like, you'll be able to identify the same characteristic in music you do care about. It's not as if a great deal of the best music of the last half-century and more wasn't also beautifully recorded.

    @rocker's point resonates. I still remember the first time I knowingly heard music on an expensive system- a friend of mine had been lent a Yamaha amp and speakers that probably weren't all that ridiculously priced by audiophile standards, but were pricey enough to be very clearly better than the sort of thing I'd heard music on before. He called me up (because people still did that then) very excited and told me to bring over some of my favourite albums. I took a selection of classic rock stuff and was blown away.

    What I remember striking me wasn't technical stuff like channel separation or bass extension, but realism. It was hearing Smoke On The Water for the millionth time, but being able to hear a Strat played through a Marshall amp turned up loud in a room was a real ear-opener. It's that intangible "in the room with you" quality that really makes listening to a great system exciting. All the technical stuff is just ways to describe what a system is doing wrong when you lose that quality.

    Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.

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  • duotoneduotone Frets: 971
    More than anything I just wanted to see what YOU guys used for testing, not what some random forum I never visit uses.
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  • duotoneduotone Frets: 971
    english_bob, I know what you mean, when I first heard I want you (She's so heavy) by The Beatles on my first decent hi-fi in the shop, I couldn't believe how much weight the instruments had behind them, not sure if that was more to do with the speakers (B&W 602 S3) or the amplifier (Marantz PM7200) or maybe a combination of them all together. 
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  • RobDaviesRobDavies Frets: 3062
    A guy in a hifi shop in Uxbridge once told me to bring my favourite CD to demo some speakers.
    He also told me to bring something owned by my missus, that I absolutely hated.

    IIRC, I took something along like Forbidden Evil by Forbidden which although not my absolute favourite, is well recorded for something so intense.

    But, the revelation was listening to my missus' copy of Simply Red's Stars album - it sounded incredible, even though I couldn't abide the music.

    So, you know something is flicking your hifi switches when it sounds good, when you'd previously dismissed  it.
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    edited July 2016
    I hate to be Mr Predictable but it is Aja by Steely Dan for me.
    There has never been a better sounding recording for testing speakers and amps.
    I'm actually listening to Black Cow right now- the separation of the drums- the ride cymbal against the hi hats, the huge but not overwhelming bass, the horns are front and centre but not overpowering, the backing vocals float in mid field and then disappear.
    It is a terrific record.
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  • SkippedSkipped Frets: 2371

    1. Donald Fagen - The Nightfly. 24bit 192Khz Stereo. (I would take my own Laptop and dac)
    2. Some well recorded female vocals. Trisha Yearwood, or Allison Kraus, or Mary Chapin Carpenter.

    That would tell me everything I need to know - good or bad - about the amp and speaker combination being auditioned. The demo would have to be at my preferred listening levels...which is pretty loud.




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  • richardhomerrichardhomer Frets: 24793
    Skipped said:

    Mary Chapin Carpenter.



    Great call - 'Come On, Come On' is a great sounding album.
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