[kramer5150]

Foremost, something you are very familiar with, something thats more or less etched in your brain. That way you can easily pick out subtle differences as you demo a new rig.

For me:
Dreamtheater - Awake. Their best recording, period. Stellar drum tones and petruccis acoustic tones are his best ever. The 7-string Ibanez makes its first DT appearance and petruccis Mesa overdrive tones are thick and massive, yet never conjested or muddy. Stand out tracks are 6:00, The Silent Man & Lifting Shadows of a Dream

An evening with Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci - Most of you would consider it mindless wankery. I for one happen to enjoy it. Petruccis playing at times is DiMeola-esque in terms of pick attack and dynamics.

Eric Johnson - Alien Love Child, Live and Beyond. SUPERB recording that captures both his shimmering Fender clean tones and his signature thick Marshall lead tones. A very spatious and open sounding recording. Some cool vocals with Malford Milligan too.

SRV - Texas Flood. The mother of all guitar recordings IMHO.

Enya - Shepherd Moons. Spatious, ambience at its best. A recording MADE for Sennheisers and K1000s.

Clapton Unplugged - ambient, spatious, HUGE soundstage. If I were forced to demo Grados with ONE CD, This would be it.

Rush - R30. The Only Neil Peart solo that I really like. Stellar drum tones and cymbal ambience. Come to think of it... the ONLY Rock drum solo that I really like (from both a recording and performance standpoint).

The Eagles Millenuim oncert - Spatious, open, ambient dynamic

 

[bl4cksh33p]

Benny Benassi's California Dreaming remix is an ABSOLUTE MUST you have bass heavy cans (dt770)

 

[stewtheking]

I always try to use acoustic music to test cans. Anything electronic or distorted etc can sound "different" or whatever, but when stuff is right with acoustic, it sounds real. Hence, I use some folk music in the mix.

No good to test bass depth, but for realism... perfect.

 

[NotJeffBuckley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stewtheking I always try to use acoustic music to test cans. Anything electronic or distorted etc can sound "different" or whatever, but when stuff is right with acoustic, it sounds real. Hence, I use some folk music in the mix. No good to test bass depth, but for realism... perfect.

This is precisely the reason I recommend Pain of Salvation's 12:5. It's an acoustic album from the progressive masters, and does include deep bass from the bassist's fretless. It's so well recorded that, honestly, you forget it's not a studio album until you hear the clapping between songs.

 

[bobbyk]

Pink Floyds "Pulse" album.

This is a series of live performances from different venues throughout the world.

On the right equipment you really can hear and feel the different ambience of each venue. You can even tell from the acoustics whether it was a summer evening when the recording was made or not. It's like you are right there!

It's an unusual recording, in that the recordings were originally mastered in anologue format before being converted to digital.

 

[drarthurwells]

Use selections that you listen to often since you have a good memory base of the sound. This is essential to detect differences in components.

I use classical selections that I know quite well (from frequent listening) for different purposes - one to detect inner detail, another to detect harshness, another to test transient attacks, etc.

 

[Denim]

Another thread in the Music topic asked what music to evaluate new equipment. asmox provided, what I thought, was a great link for equipment evaluations. Here is the thread.

 

[Leopold]

Thanks a lot, Denim! I followed the link to Zemo's post, the samples he gives are absolutely fabulous! I had no idea my laptop could produce anything near this superb SQ, now I just HAVE to burn an audio cd and test the speakers as well!

Damned... incredible recordings! Is this mp3? From an integrated soundcard?!

PS. For further exploration of deep bass control and impact: Infected Mushroom - I'm the Supervisor album. Here it is necessary with "scuba diving pressure equalization" to pop the tympanic membranes back into place now and then. This album is deceptive in where the main energy is delivered, bassheads beware!

 

[toastmaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kramer5150 Dreamtheater - Awake. Their best recording, period.

Yeah, if you like gated drums and the reverb knob set to 11. Scenes From A Memory is better for just about anything to sound realistic.

Edit: Added smiley so Kramer doesn't think I'm a jerk.

 

[Patrick82]

For a year I tested my equipment with 'The Lord of The Rings - The Return Of The King' but have now switched over to trance albums due to the multi layered bass transients.

Out of 100+ albums this is the most complex one I have:

[size=small]'Ian Van Dahl - Lost & Found'[/size]

Right from track1 ('I Can't Let You Go') (00:13+) you can hear the heavy and complex bass. Track6 ('My Own') at 02:32 has a 1 second bass transient melody that goes around in a tiny circle, it's a good test. If it doesn't make you say OMG, then the headphones are too slow.

Track2 ('Inspiration') (01:05+) is a great resolution and layering test of vocals. There are two slightly different vocal tracks on top of each other singing the same thing.

I also use that album for detail tests, like saliva sounds from the mouth of the vocalist (track3 'Where Are You Now?' 00:57).
In most tracks there are shimmering high frequency transients, like in track 11 ('Rollercoaster') at 00:54.

I'm still surprised how much this album demands from the system, there's a lot of subtle things always going on... No album I have comes close to it.

 

[Jam_Master_J]

Recently I've been using the last minute of Deathly by Aimee Mann. It has good dynamics, engaging mids and a well-defined bass line.

 

[omedon]

James Taylor - Sweet Baby James

Everybody should have this disc. It is my bass test. Fire & Rain should have a very deep emotionaly involving and overwhelming strings. They tend to sound more like cat scratches than deep bass on some systems and are barely audible rather than overwhelming.