What s Your Frame of Reference?

I do the use the Chesky disc. It's very good for it's intended purpose. In practice I following what Garfish does, but I wonder if I could be boxing myself in. My background is that I've assembled a system that gets the basics done. Obviously, it doesn't sound exactly like live music, but it's very high quality reproduced sound. It's comparable to what you would hear at a well done dealer demo of high quality equipment. Any changes to the system I would now make are fine tuning, but I wonder if I'm just making my record collection (both vinyl and CD) sound nice, as opposed to getting at what is actually on the records. Part of what got me thinking of this is my recent acquisition of a 5-band, parametric equalizer which affords me an enormous ability to vary the tonal quality of the music. Maybe I'm getting too hung-up on this accuracy thing.

Thanks for the replies. Rcprince, I envy your situation.

as several others have already mentioned, you ought to play a wide array of recordings to judge how a component changes (or doesn't change) the sound of your system. i think it's most helpful to have in your "test bin" several recordings you've heard on your system as well as a number of other systems, be they your friends', dealer's or those you encounter at audio shows and the like. i find test discs, such as those put out by ortofon, chesky, stereophile, etc. to be helpful in only the most rudimentary ways. they can tell you, for example, whether you've plugged in all your left/right ic's correctly or whether the cartridge azimuth is optimal; they are rarely helpful, however, at least to me, in determining the sonic "character" your system imparts.

as a real world example, i offer this: yesterday, i had a fellow 'phile and his wife come to my home to hear my turntable/tone arm setup to decide whether to purchase it. these are among the lp's we played to "test" the sound quality of my analogue setup: csn&y, "deja vu"; thomas dolby, "aliens ate my buick"; gary karr, "adagio d' albioni"; laurie anderson, "mister heartbreak"; paul simon, "there goes rhymin' simon"; prokofieff, "lt. kije; pink floyd, "the final cut." these were each recordings very familiar to both my potential buyer and me. we could have picked , perhaps, 20 or 30 more that would fit this description. the point is: we had "points of reference" as to these recordings. neither of us could judge if any one of them was more accurate on my system than that of "mr. x," but we could judge where the differences lay and which of those differences we preferred. that, i think,

somehow my above post got cut off. it should end with "...that, i think, is what comprizes a 'point of reference.' " -kelly

duh, "comprises" not "comprizes." -kelly

This may seem simplistic but I use a familiar recording to get a quick sense of the "tone" of the component, then the imaging. If these are favorable, I listen more carefully to try to discover something I haven't heard before in the recording. That's it. If it sounds "musical", images well and is more revealing, I have to assume it's a winner.
That assumption is the problem. Unfortunately, it's only in long term listening that you truly discover whether the CIQ (component in question) is right for you. But then for those of us drawn to Audiogon, selling it is half the fun.