millercarbon9,537 posts06-12-2021 2:52amYou are able to evaluate using only certain tracks? Fascinating!
Let's put it this way. What albums do you go to when demonstrating your system?
Whatever my listener would like to hear. Whatever floats their boat.
Seriously. I learned a long time ago that normal people just don't listen like audiophiles do. Heck, truth be told audiophiles don't even listen the way they think they do. They screw themselves over all the time turning what should be one of the most enjoyable and satisfying experiences a person can have- enjoying music - into drudgery. They do this all kinds of ways, the "demo disc" mentality being but one. Another is the audiophile checklist- extension? check! bass? check! dynamics? check! on and on? check! Did you even hear the music? What? Music? Oh yeah, you must mean "track 3"- check!
What I do instead, ask what kind of music they like the most. Music they would like to sit and do nothing but listen to it. A lot of people hardly ever really even listen to music. In any case, I always ask them. Play what they are really into and they will listen, often times rapt. They will hear things in the music they find interesting they never would notice any other way. I had a guy one time notice the difference between a mixdown and live to 2-track. Could you even do that? He did. Simply by being so deeply drawn into it.
Anyway that was why I started doing it many years ago, simply discovered most really only listen closely to music when they love the music. Then listening closely they will realize just how great the sound quality is, because then it has meaning. Without meaning, what a waste.
That is why I started doing it. Now though there is another equally good reason for not doing the "demo disc". If the goal of the system is to reproduce whatever is on the recording, not to make it sound "good", not to make it sound anything, just to be an absolutely clean and clear window into the recording, well then if you do this properly what is there to demo?
I can't honestly demo my system because in order to do that I would have to have a system that is doing something. But the whole point of my system, everything I have been working on my whole life, is to have a system that does not do anything. So how can I demo my system? I can demo recordings, sure. Cable elevators, interconnects, etc, no problemo. But the system? The question itself to me does not even make sense.
