Back in the 70’s, the label Nonesuch released a series of contemporary classical music, many are under the title, Spectrum New American music.
The surprising thing is, this was a budget label.
But universally, the quality of these is pretty amazing. They are dynamic, and their soundstage is incredibly natural sounding, with very good image specificity within the soundstage.
It extends beyond the outer edges of my speakers, and is very deep. It is very easy to imagine you could get off your listening seat, and step into the soundstage and walk among the musicians.
Now, musically speaking, they are quite atonal, dissonant, overall, ’thorny’ sounding, and somewhat challenging. So, YMMV.
But if you want to evaluate a speaker’s imaging and soundstage, these are great.
The covers all tend to look somewhat like this.
About 5 years ago, I was at a LA/OC Audio Society event, where some new Wilson's were being demoed. Peter McGrath was there, and after his talk on the speaker, I approached him about these recordings. His eyes lit up. Turns out, one of the main recording engineers for these was a mentor to Peter. He also agreed with the quality of these recordings, and made a statement something like, "the quality of these recordings, made on a budget, was a real indictment on the modern recording process".
