What Are Your Reference Discs? or Specific Reference Tracks


Looking for new gems!  My reference discs are: Graceland, Paul Simon  Avalon, Roxy Music  Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits  So, Peter Gabriel  Ten Summoner's Tales, Sting 

What are yours?

wweiss
With Miller and Fuzztone. 

Focus on the basic / fundamental elements of music and instruments and how the whole comes together. 

Any music, any track serves the purpose, including music / tracks not heard prior to.
Ear candy is any disc put out by Analogue Productions.Also I want my not so well produced discs to be listenable.Greetings From the West - Fogelberg live has a little of everything.
Wow first hilde45 wants to pretend he doesn't understand the difference between liking a song and thinking it is a demo track, then Rick wants to pretend he doesn't know ;) is a wink and means, "kidding"! 

It’s merely good scientific method to reject the pretense that a test can pretend to be more than what it is. But that doesn’t mean such tests don’t have any value -- only that their value needs to be specified in a proportionate way relative to the overall experimental question.

It may have been heavily encoded 

I'll say! Can you run that one through your decoder ring, please? ;) 

While it's true you can tell a lot about a system from how it reproduces Howling Wolf's voice on a mono mid-60s Chess album, it ain't really demo material in my book...Here are some of my favorite music selections that also display the recording art and expose faulty reproduction:

Van Morrison; Virgo Clowns...from His Band and Street Choir - 1970 Warner LP...better than the 180gr. reissue.
NGDB; Tennessee Stud and Nine Pound Hammer...WTCBU...LP
Bruce Cockburn; Kit Carson...from Nothing But A Burning Light...CD
Ry Cooder; Face to Face That I Shall Meet Him...from Jazz...LP
Yuri Honig Trio; Walking on the Moon...from Star Tracks...Tidal
Norah Jones; I've Got To See You Again...from her 1st album...CD
Frank Zappa; Cleetus Awreetus Awrightus...from Grand Wazoo...LP
Mahavishnu Orch; Vision is a Naked Sword...from Apocalypse...LP
Grateful Dead; Uncle John's Band...Workingman's (45RPM MoFi)
NGDB; Tennessee Stud and Nine Pound Hammer...WTCBU...LP
Stravinsky; The Rite...Gergiev
Mahler's 6th...Zander, BYSO (I was at the concert).
Chopin; Piano Sonata #3...Gilels on DG LP

@millercarbon No, I do understand the difference. But if it helps you to think I don't, please -- help yourself. After all, it's the year of the cat, right? ;-)