What recordings do you use to audition (or test) your system

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#121
I am using an Emma (European Mobile Media Association) cd, I believe it is the 2001-2002 cd; it has left/right channel, in phase/out of phase, and spatial tracks to start with, and a selection of various music genres (percussion, electronic, classical, male/female duo/solo, you name it..).
 
#128
AFAIK the Emma CDs are used to evaluate Hi-Fi car installations, trained judges are evaluating different aspects of the install and its sound aspects of course (tonal accuracy, spectral balance, imaging..) so I thought why not using it to assess home Hi-Fi.. I had an explaining book accompanying my Emma CD but went lost some home moves ago..
It might have been something like this:
https://www.emmanet.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022EMMA-SQ-Judgebook.pdf
 
#130
geoffkait said:
The really good recordings sound excellent on many systems. So in a sense those recordings are not very good for assessing the short comings of one’s system. If it was that easy to assess one‘s system and figure out which way to go everyone could do it.
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This is a great point. For example, lots of folks like to use Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon for showing off their systems....great album, nice recording. The ticking clock sounds and clanging chimes, dramatic bass notes, clear vocals, great saxophone and guitar solos, etc., made the album fun to show off my early 80s car system with....it was better than most car systems of the era, but nothing like what I have now at home, and nothing really noteworthy, yet somehow DSOTM sounded really good on that old car system.

These days I tend to use whatever well recorded female vocals, acoustic guitar, or piano I happen to have in my rotation and that I'm well familiar with. James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Knopfler, Tracy Chapman, Allison Krauss, Mandolin Orange, Gregory Porter, Enya, etc. A poor recording still sounds less pleasant, but can still help show how revealing your system is (or isn't). Using a wide variety of good, but not necessarily stellar recordings of the types of music you enjoy can help you setup and tweak your system to what you deem as neutral to your listening space. That way if there's something that stands out in a particular recording (like weak bass, heavy bass, upfront or reticent vocals, sibilance, hot cymbals, compression, etc, it's a good indicator that it's specific to that recording and not your system.
 
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#135
I mostly use a bit of every style I listen to and use cd's I really listen to a lot (ok, more than others). It doesn't have to be exceptional in any sense. Tracks that almost always get played are:
  • Black Sabbath: Paranoid because is is so engaging if sounding well.
  • C. Ph. Bach: Organ Sonatas, the recording by H. Tachezi in Mariathal. Any of them really.
  • Blue Man Group: Drumbone
  • Catie Curtis: Magnolia Street
  • Louis Daquin: Noël Suisse from "12 Noëls, Joseph O'Conner at the abbay of Solesmes" The organ has some nice reeds.
  • Padre Davide da Bergamo: "Il repertorio da Concerto" Marco Ruggeri playing Track 1, 3 and 8 are just fun.
  • Eleanor McEvoy: "What's following me".
  • Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells part 1. Been listening to that for ages.
  • Johann Adam Reincken: Fuga g-moll played by B. Foucroulle on the Schnitger in Hamburg.µ
  • Pachelbel: "Hexachordum Apollinis" by John Butt, the simplicity of the organ, the music and the fine playing makes everything stand out.
  • Les Witches: Nobodys Jig
  • Steeley Span: "Came Ye O'er Frae France" and "Let her go down". If the hair in my neck stand up then it is as it should be.

Ok, I admit I like organ music having it played myself for some years. After that I normally switch to some more rock stuff.
 
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#136
Havoc said:
Pachelbel: "Hexachordum Apollinis" by John Butt, the simplicity of the organ, the music and the fine playing makes everything stand out.
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Just got this one through the mail yesterday. It's a new favorite. I didn't know that Pachelbel was part of the same school as Buxtehude. I thought I was listening to Buxtehude at first.

I was obliged to listen to my mother practice several times a week on large pipe organs (church and university) as a child when she was an organ performance major (masters). I imprinted at an early age.

Chris
 
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#138
Cask05 said:
Just got this one through the mail yesterday. It's a new favorite. I didn't know that Pachelbel was part of the same school as Buxtehude. I thought I was listening to Buxtehude at first.
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Glad you like it. They are contemparies but Pachelbel was not from the same school as Buxtehude. Pachelbel was south-germany (*), Buxtehude was north-germany. Very clear lines with Pachelbel, much more harmonic play with Buxtehude. Organs in those areas where also very different. A south-german organ had almost no pedal, a north-german would have a one very similar to what we know now. And north-german organ have much more supporting lows filling out the space.

That's one of the reasons to listen to organ music played on organs the music was written for.

(*) better: the multitude of states that would become germany as we know it.
 
#139
Havoc said:
They are contemparies but Pachelbel was not from the same school as Buxtehude. Pachelbel was south-germany (*), Buxtehude was north-germany. Very clear lines with Pachelbel, much more harmonic play with Buxtehude. Organs in those areas where also very different. A south-german organ had almost no pedal, a north-german would have a one very similar to what we know now. And north-german organ have much more supporting lows filling out the space.
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You should edit the English version of Wikipedia to correct the text of the points you made, above.

My comment about Buxtehude sounding similar was in overall melodic impression--from a 50,000 ft viewpoint...not having heard Pachelbel's organ compositions first. I'm aware that the two composers sound different, but I had to listen for a while to hear what those differences are. I'm still not sure that I could reliably pick out one or the other from a blind position (not first knowing the compositions and who composed what), but I could probably listen and provide an educated guess knowing what to listen for.

And from my experiences watching organists (like my mother did) orchestrate their performances, it really depends on the selections available on the particular organ being used itself and which stops are pulled in for the piece at hand by the organist. So unless the organist is playing on a period organ from each region, the listeners may not hear big differences in composition balance

[Many people may not know that many classical pipe organ compositions have no indications of pipe ranks to be used for playing particular compositions--only the performing organist's prerogative. J.S. Bach was typical in this regard. You can hear this clearly with American organists--some of them "push the envelope"--such as Virgil Fox and in particular...Cameron Carpenter...to a much greater degree (and I'd add that it's probably well past the point of credibility).] :yikes:

Chris
 
#140
If you like jazz music, there's a Chesky recording called "New York Reunion" by McCoy Tyner with Joe Henderson, Ron Carter and Al Foster (an all star group). It was recorded live to digital by Bob Katz. It sounds pretty amazing on a really clean and powerful system, and truly awful on most stereo playback systems. It's very strange how this particular recording makes lesser hi-fi systems sound so thin and wiry, while really good systems sound spacious, punchy and dynamic. This is not a 'plush', comfortable recording. But it does make for a good system test, in my opinion.
 
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