IMO the two best tracks to demo or test any system

Either you misunderstood the mastering engineer's description of the issue or his understanding of digital music files is incomplete.

And, whether "greatest hits" CDs are remastered or not depends on two issues. One is volume normalization for tracks from different albums and the other has to do with bringing the reissue "up-to-date" with the current fads & fashions in the music industry. Neither has anything to do with how the CD stores digital info.

Inner grove distortion is an issue relate to vinyl LPs and ties to the fact that the velocity and tightness of the radius differ for the inner grooves of a LP which affects how the stylus picks up the physical groove impressions.

This issue doesn't affect CDs -- other wise the distortion would corrupt the signal and no data or program CD would ever correctly install. (CDs actually begin play at the innermost groove and work toward the outside edge which is the opposite of LPs.)

Thank you for the update it actually makes total sense... :) What tracks to you use for reference?

What I use for reference music pretty much depends on what mood I'm in. My listening tastes run to 40% or 50% classical, with the rest fairly eclectic -- blues, folk, jazz, rock and so on, though my interest in classic rock seems microscopic when compared to others on forums like this.

My reference recordings tend toward straight acoustic material (voice & instrumental), or when instruments are amplified, a straightforward miking of the amp with minimal post-processing.

For example, The Great American Mainstreet Band has a brilliant recording of early 20th century jazz titled "Silks & Rags" - one of the best recordings I've ever heard. Also excellent are the Norbert Kraft classical guitar albums, the recordings by The Empire Brass, Tea Time Ensemble, the Thomas Tallis Scholars and dozens of others.

On the folk & Americana side, Jorma Kaukonen is well recorded, as are most albums by Janis Ian, Lydia Ruffin, Maura O'Connell, The Waifs and others.

For rock & blues, I often find the recordings by lower profile bands give a better sense of realism than the big names. The latter are often grossly overprocessed. I've got copies of some of the original unprocessed studio open reel tapes from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and they are far better than the LPs. Going back, I've got a 1965 release by Lightning Hopkins that was nothing more than a couple of mikes set up in some no-name Texas studio that is absolutely intimate in its unprocessed rawness. If you want to hear musicians in your living room, start with a recording that hasn't had every gimmick thrown at it that is available in a fancy studio.

But, that's just me. I'm rather contrarian about such things.

If I played Celine Dion, I wouldn't care what anyone thought, I'd be in convulsions hoping to die.

War: Summer
Beatles: Come Together
Beach Boys: Good Vibrations
That might be three.