Top 3 songs to evaluate a system

Great topic, tough to choose just three so going with three from 3 different genres:

Classical:

Mozart Divertimento K.563 Cummings String Trio on Meridian (CD). Great for assessing string tone and ability to distinguish musical lines

Mozart Piano Uchida Live Phillips (CD). Great piano tone and hall acoustics. Check out the Adagio which is the final track. 

Brahms Violin Sonata Abel Wilson (LP). Great all around chamber music recording

Jazz:

Patricia Barber "Nightclub" Autumn Leaves. (MOFI LP) Great acoustic bass and super clean vocals. Good test for excess sibilance.

Sonny Rollins "Way Out West" (Acoustic Sounds LP) "Old Cowhand" Great live drum feel and sax immediacy. 

Linda Ronstadt and Nelson Riddle "What's New" (MOFI LP) I love the final cut "Goodbye" which is great for vocal texture and immediacy.

Rock (ish):

Fagen "The Nightfly" (MOFI One Step) and "Morph the Cat" (LP). Love the title track of the former for system drive and projection--if your feet don't move your dead! The bass guitar in Morph the Cat goes super deep and you should be able to follow the line clearly throughout the song.

Shelby Lynn "Just a Little Lovin". (Acoustic Sounds LP). The title cut is killer--yes, the kick drum should hit you in the chest but I mostly listen for the rim shots on the snare at the start--they should reverberate and echo in the studio with real percussive shock.

Nick Drake "Pink Moon" (Island LP Reissue). Great percussive guitar sound, should be able to really hear the intricate work and fingering. Pretty good for vocals too! I'll also throw in Michael Hedges "Breakfast in the Field LP and Alex Degrassi "Slow Circle" for great sounding (but different) acoustic guitar recordings. 

I'll force myself to stop.....

Late 60's Joni Mitchell.  Excellent, intimate.  The timbre of her voice, the superb guitar.  Both hard to record properly as well as a playback system to come close.  Later with Jaco pastorius should sound live.

Dreams Fleetwood Mac.  Instrument separation, voice, drums
Dallas Wind Symphony Trittico:  dynamics, drum playback, concert hall presence, horn reproduction, depth

Kraftwerk:  3D Katalog.  Space, dynamics, bass, depth,

First, I enjoyed reading everybody's choices...some were not really expected. Second a few years ago a friend of mine  passed away and he always used Diana Krall's (Paris Album) to test speakers, amps and DACS. The specific cut he used was "A Case of You ". If you can't hear piano frets being released, Diana moving aroound on the piano stool and her mike changes and most importantly at the start of her song the different postions of the audiance members caughing  you need to focus grass hopper".

First, I enjoyed reading everybody’s choices...some were not really expected. Second a few years ago a friend of mine passed away and he always used Diana Krall’s (Paris Album) to test speakers, amps and DACS. The specific cut he used was "A Case of You ". If you can’t hear piano frets being released, Diana moving aroound on the piano stool and her mike changes and most importantly at the start of her song the different postions of the audiance members caughing you need to focus grass hopper".
i just listen to this track.... A great choice...

But all these details about imaging, details about the piano frets, the caughing, all is there coming from my under 500 bucks system... The reason is my system is rightfully embed especially acoustically...

BUT MY AUDIO SYSTEM so good it is, is not perfect nor it is the best possible at all... How do i know it? Because i can judge the timbre microdynamic clarity and image coming from it....

It is impossible to judge a system only with dynamic, decay, attack, imaging, soundstage, source width, listener envelopment, bass rendition, high rendition, mids rendition alone...

Putting in words what make a sound great is impossible anyway...We all know that...

For me the only criteria that encompasses all the others in a nutshell is "timbre microdynamic"....

Each piano note must live in his own 3-d bubble with a unique physionomy of his own like a human face....Nevermind the recording...If the recording is not great it will be impossible to catch and see the timbre microdynamic even if we listen to someone caughing at different rows distance on the recording...Imaging details is only one acoustic factor...

If i had TIMBRE i have all the rest, because we cannot produce a natural realistic timbre microdynamic in a room, without all acoustic settings treatment and controls in place, and with them all these others conditions that will make possible the timbre microdynamic perception are: dynamic, decay, attack, imaging, soundstage, source width, listener envelopment, bass,mid, and high optimal rendition....

Then we cannot focus on these characteristics alone to judge a system but we must focus on "timbre microdynamic" because it encompass them all....Piano, organ, brass, and human choral voices are the best test for me,,,

When i created my acoustic controls my main guidance was timbre first, not , bass, dynamic etc by themselves....

It is my experience ....

Thanks for this magnificent thread....








 Empire brass ensemble : Gabrielli 

It is one of my cd test...because of the intermingling of all these brass  instruments forming a wall of sound in all the room 3-d with the necessary distinctive character timbre of each one of the instruments...

For piano:

Vladimir Felstman, Bach , well tempered klavier.... Here each note has a face like each human...Very well recorded and played...

For voices :

Alistair Dixon directing Chapelle du roy in Tallis complete works... Here each voice must be heard in distinction with his one physionomy....





My audio system give me a "taste" of what i described.... Proof that my embeddings controls are right.... But i know for sure that a costlier well chosen and well embedded one will geve more of that.... Cost will not be around 500 bucks but  at least around 15,000 bucks....


 Dont upgrade before embedding all gear right

Agree w anything by Jennifer Warnes, but my favorite is Ballad of the Runaway Horse- 
some “experts” say the most difficult sound to reproduce is the spoken voice-
at times she speaks, barely above a whisper, at times she really sings, the instruments are acoustic, & the subtle change from “violin “ to “fiddle” at the end.
if it doesn’t give me goosebumps, make the hairs on my arms stand on end, or make me start to sway w the music or send tears running down my cheeks, something not right w the gear.
”yup, that gear’s not right.”