What is your reference recording?

[bigshot]

The Stevie Wonder albums are great examples of remastering done right. They always sounded flat until they were remastered a while back. It was a huge improvement. David Bowie's RCA albums were the same way.

 

[Steve999]

I usually just go to Sgt. Peppers and a jazz album by Bill Evans album called Quintessence. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, I just know that if those albums don’t sound good on my s-t-e-r-e-o, I don’t want it, that’s not okay.

 

[bigshot]

That's a good Bill Evans album. He is amazing.

 

[kjason427]

Many early pressing CD's work well for testing speakers/headphones. Here are several I use:

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
Herbert von Karajan - Beethoven: 9 Symphonies
James Taylor - Greatest Hits
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1997 Remaster)
Steely Dan - Aja

 

[old tech]

The Stevie Wonder albums are great examples of remastering done right. They always sounded flat until they were remastered a while back. It was a huge improvement. David Bowie's RCA albums were the same way.

Not sure what you mean by that. The RCA CDs (well most of them) are still regarded today to be the best (subjectively) sounding recordings of Bowie, it is the main reason these early CDs are worth quite a bit of money on the used market. The remasters generally did result in somewhat greater clarity but a more compressed sound with ear piercing emphasis in various frequencies compared to the smooth sound of the RCAs. Having said that, the current remasters are certainly better than the first Ryko remasters.

 

[bigshot]

The remasters sound better to me. But both the old CDs and the new ones sound better than the LPs did.

 

[peterinvan]

Here is my Tidal Test Playlist. It includes many Genres (Jazz, Classical, Rock, Pop, etc). I am a bass enthusiast, so lots of bass-heavy tracks:

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/fa6622ac-b9ca-4482-97a4-24e6480b4449

 

[Ufanco]

Thanks @peterinvan I been listening too your tidal playlist the last few days and really enjoy it.

 

[71 dB]

A system doesn't only need to do well with my reference. It has to do well with everything, because I don't listen to only one reference! Some recordings might be good for testing bass, some other for testing spatiality etc. So, in the end I don't have a particular reference.

 

[FunkyBassMan]

Here is my Tidal Test Playlist. It includes many Genres (Jazz, Classical, Rock, Pop, etc). I am a bass enthusiast, so lots of bass-heavy tracks:

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/fa6622ac-b9ca-4482-97a4-24e6480b4449

If you really want reference level, you should move off Tidal to Qobuz.

 

[GiullianSN]

Here is my suggestion.

Specially Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, Starman…. All pf them really.

 

[Mink]

I always listen to these albums when I get a new pair of headphones. I played them to death so it gives me a good impression about the 'quality' of the pair.
But to be frank, every pair I bought and tried in the last decade have past the test. Nowadays you really have to search hard to find a truly poor sounding pair of headphones.

 

[Ghoostknight]

im actually making a new playlist for testing new equipment, mostly for reference purpose but i also like most of these songs
https://www.deezer.com/de/playlist/11304490304

imo, there isnt "the" perfect test song (but there are some good condenders i would say), eq`s can be quite different with different songs, specially between different albums of even the same band
but if you test with different songs, one showing dynamic, the other compression, another phase stuff you get a better picture of the overall system
(if someone is wondering why i test "compression", its a good way to see how your speakers react to "much going on", while slow dynamic songs sound generally better just "compressed" songs tax the speakers more..)

for example, my goto to listen for perfect phase would be "Alien-T - The Hammer of the devil", there is like 5 to 10 times in the song a drop, which just sounds properly if the phase is 100% correct, and i just noticed that reconstruction filters that even mess with phase just a few degrees its audible with this drop!!
notice: i dont listen to this song pretty often, just for test purposes but specially the drop is made "perfect", it isnt called "hammer of the devil" without reason, lets put it this way
tho i havent figured out yet if this drop just shows the phase of a specific frequency (probably) but if i adjust the stereo phase so this drop sounds "insane hard" also other accoustic stuff sounds better and specially bass
the drop also easly(!) shows if you have absolute phase set correctly (this also had me discovered that the OG Topping D10 has inverted absolute phase...im still mad at topping for getting something this easy wrong)

two other songs for phase: from Circio`s Rapture - "Polarity Check" and "Polarity Test"
these are also two very good for phase

 

[bigshot]

What in your system is creating phase problems and how do you go about correcting it?

 

[Ghoostknight]

What in your system is creating phase problems and how do you go about correcting it?

im kinda happy right now since i dont alter phase anymore with IIR filters, phase should be "stock" now since i use SPM instead of IIR in EasyEffects on Linux
but with the test described above i figured out that different reconstruction filters also mess with phase, in EasyEffects is a "Stereo Tool" Plugin which lets you rotate stereo phase by degree, with the filter i used on my Aune X8 i had to set phase to -4 degree to get the most impact out of the drop which "should" mean better phase..
it might be not perfect for overall phase but imo with -4 its audibly better overall