@joseph796 - Randy - First - my apologies for the "War and Peace" sized posting
- I hope you find this useful :-)
My audition list is ever changing, but I’ll share some of the artists and/or tracks that tend to stay in my list and which "metric" I use them to assess
First, to help understand my listening environment
- my speakers are around 8ft apart
- I sit approximately 9 ft from my speakers
- the speakers are 8ft from the wall behind them
- the ceiling is about 7.5 ft high
- The floor is carpeted
- the area where the system is located is 17ft wide
- the room is around 42 ft long and irregular shaped at the far end
- I am fortunate that this particular room required very little in the way of acoustic treatments.
To assess Dynamic Performance I find many tracks from The Police and Roxette to provide extremely crisp guitar work and very dynamic drums
To assess the size of the image...
- The Best of Supertramp has a very nice depth to the image behind the speakers
- Is this Love - Bob Marley provides an exceptionally wide image with precise placement of artists/instruments that exceed the width of the speakers on left and right sides
- Hide and Seek, by Imogen Heep is one of those tracks with superb engineering that places some of the echoes just behind my head
To assess details and clarity I tend to use tracks of live recordings in larger spaces with great venue acoustics...
- Papas Callentes by La Chimera - superb Venue acoustics and large image
- Undring by Sigmund Groven & Iver Kleive - this is a lone Harmonica with a Pipe Organ inside a church
- Miroslav Tadic - album: Window Mirror - a superbly recorded solo guitar in a venue with superb acoustics
- Marianne Thornsen - Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major - Allegro - the better performing cables provide much smoother violin solo passages and more precise imaging
- Brass Splendor by the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble - the best track is Fanfare for the Common Man - the opening of this track has a huge gong that provides amazing textures across the frequency range. But there are many tracks on this album that sound superb on a good system.
Also - the transient peeks of Pipe Organ music can put significant demands on an amplifier, so I tend to use this music to assess a power cable’s ability to satisfy amplifier demands for current
As I progressed with my cable development I found that many tracks there seemed to be an awful lot of venue acoustics (echoes/reverb) so to eliminate the prospect that some of this was actually being generated within the room, I went into my library to find tracks with very little to no engineered echoes and reverb. Norah Jones is one artist that had a few tracks with no "engineered effects", so it is as if she in right there in your listening space.
Once I realized that those echoes and reverberations on other tracks were part of the recording, it provided another aspect to the music that I could use to assess details and clarity
Other artists on my playlists include...
- Diana Krall - outstanding piano, acoustic bass and very subtle venue acoustics
- Holly Cole- outstanding acoustic bass
- Joan Armatrading - great acoustics and details
- Dominic Mancuso - amazing acoustic guitar details
- Susannah McCorkle - great image
- P!nk - her acoustic tracks are very good and other tracks very dynamic
- Xiomara - great imaging and details
- Jack Johnson - great details in his guitar work and voice
- Peter Gabiel - the album So
- Dire Straights
- Mark Knopfler
Many of the tracks I have in both Digital and vinyl formats, so I can assess both source types using the same tracks
Unfortunately, most of my "choice" vinyl albums I use for assessing the analogue side of my system are very old and probably no longer available, like Songs from the wood (Jethro Tull) and The Steeleye Span Story. Older Taj Mahal albums I like better than his newer albums.
BUT if you should be in a store that sells previously enjoyed albums and come across an album called Better Days (1973) with Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Baron, Amos Garrett, Geoff Muldaur Christopher Parker and Billy Rich - it is one of the best engineered albums of that time and even with all the pops and crackles - it transports you to what appears to be the hall in which it was recorded, with the guys just sitting around playing. The details and clarity are outstanding and the image and venue acoustics are simply amazing.
Also, to help you understand a little about me...
- I’ve played guitar for over 50 years - bass, acoustic electric slide, lead & rhythm
- I was taught Piano at the age of 8, but gave up at 13 when I got my first guitar
- I’ve played in a band with keyboard, sax and clarinet
- I played drums in a marching band for a couple of years
- I’ve tried mandolin and harmonica
- And my siblings all played various instruments
I mention this is because it gave me a very good "appreciation" for the various nuances associated with real sound of instruments, as opposed to the recorded sound, which sometimes mutes them
- the many harmonics that each instrument produces
- the dynamics associated with each instrument.
My system:
- Custom built turntable with Soundsmith’d Denon DL 103 cartridge (modified mount)
- Simaudio Moon LP 5.3 phono stage
- Bluesound Node 2i - ethernet connected to NAS drive and internet
- Bryston B135 integrated amp
- Gershman Acoustics Sonogram floor standing speakers
- cables: DIY Helix cables (mentioned in other Agon threads)
If anyone has a real favorite album that demonstrate great sound engineering and imaging please share it and why you like it so much.
So many albums- so little time - Regards Steve