full-scale orchestral music—best test of speakers’ potential?


Here’s a general observation made after visiting many rooms and listening to many loudspeakers at CAF: full-scale orchestral music, i.e. recordings of large symphony orchestras, provide the most demanding test of a speaker’s abilities.  I’d argue this for two reasons.

1. Audio systems attempt to create a simulacrum of an acoustic event in your living room.  That original event may have occurred in a tiny jazz club or a huge arena, and everything in between.  That is to say, the space in which it occurred may be very similar in size to your listening room, or it may be very different.  Given the size, on stage, of a full orchestra, and given the size of the auditoriums where they play, it’s very challenging for a system to reproduce the impression of that size in your living room—none are perfect, but some are better than others in providing the right kinds of cues.

2. Another variable here is that the music played may have been acoustic or electronically amplified.  Recordings of acoustic instruments and voice remove one extra step in the long chain of reproduction: we know pretty much what a violin should sound like, but what should a certain Gibson guitar through a certain Peavey amp sound like?

Massed violins playing fortissimo are the most stringent test of a speaker’s treble range.  In room after room, I heard rock, pop, jazz, blues, folk, etc. etc. reproduced really very beautifully, but often when an orchestral piece came on, it could sound harsh, steely, astringent, nails on chalkboard.  The fault of the recording, you say.  But a few speakers (I’m not naming names, to avoid that kind of argument), didn’t do that, and sailed through the test.

128x128twoleftears
I start with voice too, Bob Dylan, if it sounds good and I can make out all the lyrics then something is amiss. 
If you can understand the lyrics (clear voices) and do large scale orchestral  well you are probably good to go.
Lorin Maazel Shostakovich 5th is a good test CD recorded by Telarc. Especially the last movement. Plenty of dynamics.
IMHO massed strings are the ultimate torture test for a loudspeaker vis-a-vis correct phase and coherence. My Walsh 5000s do a wonderful job with both massed strings and depicting the full power of a symphony orchestra with control and believable acoustic. Massed violins will sound wirey, phasey or gritty if phase is being distorted given the extraordinary overtone content therein. If your cables are mangling the signal, massed strings will reveal it. If you want to determine whether the recording is phase correct versus inverted, massed strings will always sound more natural and "correct" when the phase of the recording is correct (i.e. The Mercury Living Presence CDs sound noticably more spacious and natural when played at 180 degrees (flipped polarity).

Other torture tests for a loudspeaker are stentorian soprano and piano articulations. The former will bring out any cone/dome resonance and breakup modes; the latter is perhaps the most stringent test of a systems dynamics. 
@mamboni Very interesting observations.  I wish my preamp had a phase button so I could switch back and forth easily.