Top 3 songs to evaluate a system

First, I enjoyed reading everybody’s choices...some were not really expected. Second a few years ago a friend of mine passed away and he always used Diana Krall’s (Paris Album) to test speakers, amps and DACS. The specific cut he used was "A Case of You ". If you can’t hear piano frets being released, Diana moving aroound on the piano stool and her mike changes and most importantly at the start of her song the different postions of the audiance members caughing you need to focus grass hopper".
i just listen to this track.... A great choice...

But all these details about imaging, details about the piano frets, the caughing, all is there coming from my under 500 bucks system... The reason is my system is rightfully embed especially acoustically...

BUT MY AUDIO SYSTEM so good it is, is not perfect nor it is the best possible at all... How do i know it? Because i can judge the timbre microdynamic clarity and image coming from it....

It is impossible to judge a system only with dynamic, decay, attack, imaging, soundstage, source width, listener envelopment, bass rendition, high rendition, mids rendition alone...

Putting in words what make a sound great is impossible anyway...We all know that...

For me the only criteria that encompasses all the others in a nutshell is "timbre microdynamic"....

Each piano note must live in his own 3-d bubble with a unique physionomy of his own like a human face....Nevermind the recording...If the recording is not great it will be impossible to catch and see the timbre microdynamic even if we listen to someone caughing at different rows distance on the recording...Imaging details is only one acoustic factor...

If i had TIMBRE i have all the rest, because we cannot produce a natural realistic timbre microdynamic in a room, without all acoustic settings treatment and controls in place, and with them all these others conditions that will make possible the timbre microdynamic perception are: dynamic, decay, attack, imaging, soundstage, source width, listener envelopment, bass,mid, and high optimal rendition....

Then we cannot focus on these characteristics alone to judge a system but we must focus on "timbre microdynamic" because it encompass them all....Piano, organ, brass, and human choral voices are the best test for me,,,

When i created my acoustic controls my main guidance was timbre first, not , bass, dynamic etc by themselves....

It is my experience ....

Thanks for this magnificent thread....








 Empire brass ensemble : Gabrielli 

It is one of my cd test...because of the intermingling of all these brass  instruments forming a wall of sound in all the room 3-d with the necessary distinctive character timbre of each one of the instruments...

For piano:

Vladimir Felstman, Bach , well tempered klavier.... Here each note has a face like each human...Very well recorded and played...

For voices :

Alistair Dixon directing Chapelle du roy in Tallis complete works... Here each voice must be heard in distinction with his one physionomy....





My audio system give me a "taste" of what i described.... Proof that my embeddings controls are right.... But i know for sure that a costlier well chosen and well embedded one will geve more of that.... Cost will not be around 500 bucks but  at least around 15,000 bucks....


 Dont upgrade before embedding all gear right

Agree w anything by Jennifer Warnes, but my favorite is Ballad of the Runaway Horse- 
some “experts” say the most difficult sound to reproduce is the spoken voice-
at times she speaks, barely above a whisper, at times she really sings, the instruments are acoustic, & the subtle change from “violin “ to “fiddle” at the end.
if it doesn’t give me goosebumps, make the hairs on my arms stand on end, or make me start to sway w the music or send tears running down my cheeks, something not right w the gear.
”yup, that gear’s not right.”

Any song from Yellow Toy

Great topic for a rainy weekend and find new stuff to listen too. As a big PG fan I will definitely look up ’Blood of Eden’. Also great to see what different people look for (timbre, boing sound of bongo’s, I never thought of that myself). When I went shopping for new (standmount) speakers last year I spent days compiling a ’test’ list for the audition sessions. To come up with 3 songs however is really hard. +1 for Bela Fleck though. So that’s the bass department covered.
Now I’ll include some African flavor for variety:

1) Baaba Maal - Yiriyaro (Percussion storm). As the title suggests, it a myriad of percussion patterns, so if your system gets you up to dance it’s got PRAT. And there should be a pretty nice soundstage experience with the recorded thunderstorm at the end.

2) Depeche Mode - In Chains. The synth intro can act nicely as an alternative REW frequency sweep :-) and the first verse + guitar cord attacks is helpful for system dynamics. (note: my guess is classical pieces are much better at that, but I don’t listen to any)

3) Fish - Vigil. I’m including it for those that are looking for systems that are ’unforgiving’ for bad recordings. If it’s unforgiving, the bombastic chorus should sound really awful.

bigkidz:  I listen for piano first. What does that sound like as most music is in the mid-range. To me SS cannot offer the piano sound I prefer as the decay of the notes is to my ears to fast. Tubes seem to delay the decay which I prefer as to me it sounds more realistic and I can hear the "wood" of the instrument.

If the recording is done in a dead room, the piano notes will sound like decaying too fast without reverb.  "Delaying" it using an audio signal processing technique implemented in some DAC sometimes overcooks it and will only make piano notes sound artificially.  I do not know how much effect can be created by tube amp because I do not own one but I just want to stress the importance of the original recording.  A good stereo system is to preserve those attributes, not to create them.