CD's you bring for auditioning

Purist Demo CDs and the Mapleshade Sampler,along with Taj Mahal:Martin Scorsese presents the Blues.
I Am Walking:New native music.Good spatial effects and tests top/bottom end extension/dynamics.

This is an interesting question. I do have a couple. Itzak Pearlman and Oscar Peterson together on TELARC - its a great recording with two very difficult instruments to reproduce well - viol and piano; Duke Ellington's Duke's Big Four to see how tight those knick drums get reproduced; usually something large and orchestral like a beethoven symphony to see if the system has good large work clarity; and finally something like Art Pepper +11 to kind of roll all those things in together.

Rostropovich on Teldec with a chamber ensemble (I'm too lazy to go to my basement and tell you the exact details) playing a Vivaldi piece. Always start with that. A couple of bars into it the music drops a couple of octaves, and that moment is when amplifiers get their soul exposed for the world to see. Dynamics, microdynamics, ability to raise current as speaker impedance drops, attack and decay, all tested at once. Also Roger Waters' Amused to Death for soundstaging, Vienna Teng for vocal naturality, Massive Attack or Thievery Corporation for bass, Nils Peter Molvaer for range and detail, etc.

I just bring a CD with an approximated impulse response. I can do the Fourier transformation in my head.

If I want to understand the effect of the room, I bring a 5-second glide tone.

Between these 2 tracks, I have a pretty good understanding of what is going on. Any other approach is a waste of time.