Songs you use when auditioning gear

Yesterday I listened to LPs of Aja and Gaucho back to back.  I wouldn't say Gaucho  was that much brighter than Aja.

@drmuso I was referring to the CD version of Gaucho, which sounds like a lot of early 80s CD recordings in that it’s thin and glassy sounding. Personally I use Patricia Barber’s live Companion CD and Keb’ Mo’s Slow Down CD among many others as well-recorded reference material. As for rock “Tin Pan Alley” from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Couldn’t Stand the Weather CD is always a good go to.

@drmuso I stream mostly and the streaming versions of the two albums sound similar to what @soix describes.  The CDs I’ve ripped to my local SSD sound the same as well.  Maybe I should get a turntable and start spinning records, sounds like I’m missing out.

Tin Pan Alley on LP is awesome...

The King's Singers:  Hard Day's Night

Fourplay: Between the Sheets

Flim and the BB's: Brekken's Farm

Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters: Kansas City Monarch

And, popular rock hits that they've heard a gazillion times, but never experienced on a high resolution system with space, focus, and depth.

@jastralfu 

that’s an interesting perspective.  I don’t listen to much classical but I have been diving into all types of Jazz though.  Any suggestions for well recorded Jazz titles?

Even before I became a classical fan, I would still use classical recordings for evaluation purposes. Again, because I knew that the vast majority of classical recordings, are recorded with the least manipulation between the recording process, and the recording that us consumers are able to purchase. 

But, the thing that convinced me that classical recordings were superior for evaluating gear, is an experience I had in a high end store years ago, in my early days of high end gear.

They were demoing some high end gear for a customer, playing the usual stuff (Aja, Sire Straits, Fleetwood Mac, etc), and it was sounding really good. 

Then they put on some modern chamber music, Bartok I believe. And my jaw hit the floor. Not from the music itself (I was still not a classical fan at the time), but from the qualitative difference between the soundstage and imaging of the classical, and the other recordings. 

As well as the other recordings were creating a soundstage and image, it was nothing like the classical recording.

At no time during the playback of the rock recordings, did I ever get the feeling as if I could get up off the listening couch, and walk into the soundstage among the musicians. At no time could I "hear the walls" of the studio were those bands were recording. At no time could I hear the space around the musicians. 

I could go into the type of mic'ing techniques used in classical recordings as to why they have such a 3d soundstage, but this post is already getting too long.