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which music do you use to test headphones?

post #1 of 81
6/28/06 at 2:53pm
Thread Starter 
hi guys... i'm wondering which music or song you guys use to test your headphones.

which song is good to test the bass response? which one is good for testing treble? mid-range? anything else?
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post #2 of 81
6/28/06 at 3:15pm
Good question.
I have 2 methods.
1) The Reference tracks
usually I start with Dream Theater - Awake album, track#1 (6:00) because it starts with the Drum "cycle" so you can hear the drum and soundstage.
Then you get the synthesizer comes in and then the guitars...
And then you get the musicality and PRAT indication.

So the instruments comes one after the other and you have time to evaluate each instrument and how he cahnges the sound when he comes into the picture (more like how the Can handles it when it adds into the "big image").

2) I just play songs that I like and I know really really good almost "blindly", and just listen how things are from the way Iknow them, Details, texture, sound signature, balance, coloration, dynamics and all the other parameters.

I have some more songs for method #1 but you get the Idea from the Dream Theater song .
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post #3 of 81
6/28/06 at 3:29pm
I have a large variety of songs that I use. Here's 7 of those songs that I specifically make sure that I use:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.ph...180D8B170530E8
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post #4 of 81
6/28/06 at 4:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wibowo
hi guys... i'm wondering which music or song you guys use to test your headphones.

which song is good to test the bass response? which one is good for testing treble? mid-range? anything else?
Bass: old an dnew jazz, so Mingus, Miles, Coltrane. Newer: Victor Wooten, Marcus Miller, Herbie Hancock (Ron Carter on bass), Keith Jarrett (solo and trio). "Tala Matrix" form Tabla beat science good also,
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post #5 of 81
6/28/06 at 4:10pm
There are others but the 2 songs that absolutely have to be part of my evalution reviews are:

Holly Cole - Told him my dog wouldn't Run
Van Halen - Doin Time

HC-THMDWR is a great song to judge emotional correctness, attack, PRaT and natural acoustic instruments.

VH-DT is an all percussion solo, excellent for judging blackness, soundstage width and depth, levels of various frequencies and micro and macro dynamics

I have others to test if a piece can keep up with a busy song or engage me etc. But the first two are musts and frankly with just those two I can tell if the can is a keeper or just the next in a long line of over hyped hardware
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post #6 of 81
6/28/06 at 4:16pm
Mozart*The 5 Violin Concertos by Ltzhak Perlman, Wiener Philharmoniker and James Levine, Masters
-For classic

David Russell - Renaissance Favorites for Guitar
-For guitar

and listen various rocks.
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post #7 of 81
6/28/06 at 4:38pm
Maybe not quite so pro, but everytime I get a new upgrade, I always pop in my Tenacious D CD and let it play through a couple of times.

I don't know exactly why, but I always reach for that CD first when I want to listen to something, so I guess I feel like I know the sounds pretty intimately.

I find that when I've listened to something that much, I'm able to identify new sounds and changes to old sounds fairly easily.

I also use my Full Collapse (Thursday) and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (My Chemical Romance) CDs, since I listen to them often, too, and they accentuate different strengths/weaknesses in sound. The also complement the Tenacious D CD pretty well!

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post #8 of 81
6/28/06 at 4:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Shadow
Good question.
I have 2 methods.
1) The Reference tracks
usually I start with Dream Theater - Awake album, track#1 (6:00) because it starts with the Drum "cycle" so you can hear the drum and soundstage.
Then you get the synthesizer comes in and then the guitars...
And then you get the musicality and PRAT indication.

So the instruments comes one after the other and you have time to evaluate each instrument and how he cahnges the sound when he comes into the picture (more like how the Can handles it when it adds into the "big image").

2) I just play songs that I like and I know really really good almost "blindly", and just listen how things are from the way Iknow them, Details, texture, sound signature, balance, coloration, dynamics and all the other parameters.

I have some more songs for method #1 but you get the Idea from the Dream Theater song .
1) do the exact same
2) similar but i tend to stick to classical on secound round..
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post #9 of 81
6/28/06 at 4:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Shadow
Dream Theater
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post #10 of 81
6/28/06 at 5:14pm
The first thing I purposefully listen for in new headphones is the bass.

To do this best, I use two songs.
The first is from the game Unreal Tournament 2004, called Jailbreak. I love the fast impact the bass drum has!!!
Then, I move onto a song from the game Diablo 2 called Maggot by Matt Uelmen. Yet another song with a wide range of very impactful bass drums, which I love!!!!!!

These two songs are enough for me to decide how the bass sounds.

If the headphones bring a smile to my face after these two, then I move onto some rock (metallica, judas priest, etc) to see how they work. And after that, some orchestra type music.
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post #11 of 81
6/28/06 at 5:22pm
To test music, I usually just pull a well produced disc out of the collection, sit back and close my eyes. It's hard to fid discs that have been released recently that have a decent production value to them, but here are a few that I use:

Sneaker Pimps: Splinter
God Lives Underwater: Life in the So-Called Space Age
Atomica: Metropolis
Micronaut: Europa
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post #12 of 81
6/28/06 at 5:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bsdlite
Quote:
Originally Posted by cantsleep
1) do the exact same
2) similar but i tend to stick to classical on secound round..
Its good to see that I have some partners to my testing methodologies

I find it rather usefull...

its funny because one time I went to listen to a pair of bookshelf speakers: Vienna acoustics - Haydn Grand hooked up to a Plinius 9100.
And all the tracks were good, nothing special that attracked my ear. (I used Dream theater, Blind Guradian, Aerosmith, Led zeppelin, Pink Floyd etc...)
And then I put this Symphony X album, "The Odyssey", and all of a sudden the speaker came back to life, out of no where !!! I was jaw opened for a few minutes there, like, where did that came from ?!?!
The sound was soooo good, I can't explain, pretty unusual
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post #13 of 81
6/28/06 at 7:14pm
When I was blue-tak modding my HD280s and was looking for changes in bass/impact, I used a lot of Coheed and Cambria tracks from "Good Apollo, I'm a Burning Star." "The Suffering" especially is a good bass/impact test track.
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post #14 of 81
6/28/06 at 7:16pm
Quote:
Holly Cole - Told him my dog wouldn't Run
Excellent choice, a favorite of mine, but surprised anyone else had even heard of it.

Other good choices:

Crash Test Dummies - "I'm Outlived By That Thing" > "All of this Ugly" from A Worm's Life

Dave Mathews Band - "Two Step" from Crash

Emmylou Harris - "Where Will I Be" from Spyboy

Bjork - "Aeroplane" from Debut

Steely Dan - "Aja" from Aja
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post #15 of 81
6/28/06 at 7:35pm
For those familiar with Japanese music, I usually use LUNA SEA's "FEEL" or "GRAVITY" to test how well the headphones respond to rock music.

I've uploaded "FEEL" in FLAC here for anyone interested in sampling it. Beware, it may spur some of you into the world of Japanese rock .
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