Most Challenging CD


What is the CD that most puts your system to task in your collection?

My best is, Tchaikovsky "The Nutcracker," by the Kirov Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev. This CD has it all, huge bass passages, giant crescendos, sharp horns and interwoven dynamics.

Yes, I know, there are lots of CDs that show all these attributes. There is one thing on this CD that I have never heard on any other, a real loud gun shot.

Sure, some 1812 Overture discs have real cannon fire. They just aren't as powerful as the gun shot on this Nutcracker disc. This report is a CRACKPOW!!!!!!!!

Ok, what do you have that tests your system like no other? I am not really interested in test discs. I have those and they aren't as good, besides being boring.
muralman1
Magfan, that sounds like the winner for realism attack. If the shot has a ear piercing snap and shock to it's delivery, it should make you jump.
I bought the Wellington's Victory disk because the original piece of music had been composed for a music playing machine....a really....really big music box, as it were. The music survives, the machine was never successful.
I put the disk on a buddies stereo...with then common 12" 3-way ported speakers from RSL, a Southern California company which made it own line of pretty good speakers. JBL copies.....
We were out front playing Frisbee when the first shot hit. My buddy went pale and bolted for the house to turn it down. It was so loud I thought the woofer cone would have been launched across the room, connected back the the speaker with a little curly-cue of wire.
I felt bad for a second, until I remembered some of the nasty stuff he had done to MY stereo over the years!
Without a doubt "Michael Bolton Sings Celine Dion's Greatest Hits".

Now that's challenging.
How about the tune "Oh Yeah" by Yello? I forget the CD name.

Lurch from the Adams Family doing his best Macho Man Randy Savage imitation.