Make your own music recordings! Borrow or rent a pair of good mics and a reel-to-reel recorder, and ask a musician friend (you do have them, right?) if you can record a live performance. Once the tape is rolling, listen intently to the music and the sound. Then listen to the recording at home, comparing the sound you heard with the sound your system is producing.
Another great thing to record is the human voice. We are all very familiar with that sound, and any "vowel" coloration (as J. Gordon Holt put it) will be glaringly obvious. WARNING: Most loudspeakers fail this demanding test. The QUAD ESL (introduced in 1957!) excelled in reproducing singing voices, setting a standard few other speakers to this day can match.
If you are new to live recording, you may need to take a few stabs at it before you seem to have captured the sound fairly accurately. The catch-22 is that the only way to evaluate the tape is to listen to it on a system, the very thing you are trying to determine the tonal accuracy of!
If that sounds like more than you want to take on, use recordings known for having life-like tonal characteristics. Known superior recordings in that regard are those on the Water Lily Records. Try A Meeting On The River, featuring the guitar playing of Ry Cooder.
Another great thing to record is the human voice. We are all very familiar with that sound, and any "vowel" coloration (as J. Gordon Holt put it) will be glaringly obvious. WARNING: Most loudspeakers fail this demanding test. The QUAD ESL (introduced in 1957!) excelled in reproducing singing voices, setting a standard few other speakers to this day can match.
If you are new to live recording, you may need to take a few stabs at it before you seem to have captured the sound fairly accurately. The catch-22 is that the only way to evaluate the tape is to listen to it on a system, the very thing you are trying to determine the tonal accuracy of!
If that sounds like more than you want to take on, use recordings known for having life-like tonal characteristics. Known superior recordings in that regard are those on the Water Lily Records. Try A Meeting On The River, featuring the guitar playing of Ry Cooder.