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

[Havoc]

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

Well, I could go on for quite a bit about this 😉 Studied pipe organ for about 40 years, gave up because I will never be good enough to play as I like it to be played. It would take us too far I think. But just 2 quick remarks:

• they didn't note their registrations because they assumed those playing it knew what to do
• hearing the differences is just practice

I did play and liked to play Pachelbel. But never got my head around Buxtehude, for me one of the more difficult baroque composers, can't make head or tails what he tries to convey.

 

[Horneydude]

I used to have an audio friend for years and years, we always auditioned each others systems when "oww this is a big step forward... you must come over to hear it" situations appeared. We developed a common portfolio of music we both knew well and listened those recordings when we were visiting each other after the call that "this is amazing you have to come over...". We liked to evaluate with Roger Waters "Amused to death" and knew every Q-sound thingy by head... the sled, the explosion, the tv on the left.... We also used to listen to various records of Yello, Touch (remastered). Also popular was Niels Lofgren Live, both with band and solo. Diana Krall Live, Eryka Badhu Live, Trentemoller, Thomas Dolby's "I scare myself". On vinyl I loved Gino Vanelli, Roxy Music. Can go on...

 

[wrenchone]

I like this one, as with a good system you can hear inside the track what the percussion is doing when it gets lively (like with "Hut on Fowl's Legs"). A bad reproduction chain will give you undifferentiated mush. I heard this one on a really good system at one of the Burning Amp festivals, and the reproduction was amazing.

https://www.discogs.com/release/245...Maria-Giulini-Bilder-Einer-Ausstellung-Pictur

 

[FrankieS]

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.

interesting

 

[Ghoostknight]

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.

"Ask me Now" is a great recording..... specially trumpet style instruments (saxophone?) seem to be one of the end-bosses for audio systems 🙂

 

[Ghoostknight]

https://listen.tidal.com/playlist/daacc21c-b9e1-471d-be7a-ec3de3bee554

just started recently this playlist.... where i noticed huge differences if you get your low end in the room right, quite funny stuff 🙂

 

[EmSuppSW]

This instrumental percussion track has a lot of different aspects packed into one track: bass reach, transients, dynamics, soundstage/stereo image and depth
Andy Akiho, Sandbox percussion - Pillar I

Good track / album to check whether bass levels are balanced
Nenad Vasilic - For Luis, from the album Bass room

Low frequency envelopment and LF spatial reproduction capabilities of the speaker-room system
Alva Noto - HYbr:ID Ectopia removing infinities

 

[Puffin]

Teardrop - Massive Attack. There is at times what I call subliminal bass that if your system produces enhances the whole performance and if it missing then you would never know it is there.

Fading Sun - Terje Isungset, lena Nymark. Wierd haunting sparsely populated track with monster bass that shakes the room.

Pan-Sonic - Laptevineri/Laptev Sea....Did I say I like deep bass 😀

Anything by Dominic Miller.

Temptation - Diana Krall

 

[Noir69]

Camille Saint Saëns "symphonie n°3 with organ" _ 2nd movment, notably the first seconds for its ultra low bass
Arne Domnerus "Antiphone blues" for sax playing and organ : mediums and lows
Alison Krauss CD " A hundred miles or more" , track 3 "Jacobs dream" for vocal hights.

 

[Cask05]

I recently picked up six (6) new-to-me CDs that diyAudio member Havoc suggested in an earlier posting in this thread (and thanks again for sharing your suggestions).

Since I had a great deal of trouble locating these recordings from the citations listed above each selection, I thought I would also provide a picture of the album covers and the on-line reference that I used to acquire each of these recordings.

Below you will find my (very) unfiltered comments and quick assessments of each of those albums that I picked up from his longer list of track selections. Basically, I picked up all the classical recordings he listed...and one popular (folk-rock) album from 1996..

• C. Ph. Bach: Organ Sonatas, the recording by H. Tachezi in Mariathal. Any of them really.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Organ Sonatas - Herbert Tachezi

If you're used to hearing J.S. Bach preludes and fugues (from the late baroque), these sonatas from probably his most well-known son sound very thinned out and "simplified", but still retain a JS Bach or baroque sound to them. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a composer of the galant style (which I instead learned as the "Roccoco" style many decades ago, and a style which immediately follows the baroque style historically). Galant greatly simplifies many of the typical compositional constructs of the late baroque, including the constructs of counterpoint, etc. These sonatas are a pleasure to listen to--as you go about your day.

• Louis Daquin: Noël Suisse from "12 Noëls, Joseph O'Conner at the abbay of Solesmes" The organ has some nice reeds.

Orgues Historiques D'Europe

The above single track selection was taken from a compilation of six CDs from a 1989 collection of performances which I acquired last fall, many selections of which I am familiar with from my own mother's organ playing (this particular selection being one I with which I was previously familiar). This selection was from disc four of six, the third track on that particular CD. There are many other tracks on these discs that I can also recommend highly. If you like a large array of favorite baroque and later period organ selections, I can recommend this collection highly.

• Padre Davide da Bergamo: "Il repertorio da Concerto" Marco Ruggeri playing Track 1, 3 and 8 are just fun.

Davide Da Bergamo: Il Repertorio da Concerto

Not my favorite style of classical organ music composition/playing. This album presents a series of compositions from the romantic era on a expanded "theater" type organ meant to provide light entertainment to patrons of plays and perhaps opera (including the rapidly repeating bell strike organ stops and cuckoo-clock-like sounds. Some tracks are interesting/entertaining (at least initially).

• Eleanor McEvoy: "What's following me".

What's Following Me?

An Irish folk-rock singer. This 1996 album presents an album average of -6.38 dB ReplayGain to the listener's ears, such that a negative amplification (i.e., an attenuation) of -6.38 dB is needed on each of the album's tracks in order to bring their combined loudness down to zero (ReplayGain) for the album. Using Audacity's Clip Fix command, followed by a Normalize command will reconstruct and reduce the overall amplitude of the track to remove the hard clipped peaks induced via mastering limiting alone (not as played by the musicians or mixed by the recording engineer). The mastering guy that performed this "grass mowing" exercise of the track peak envelopes induced a infinite series of odd-order harmonics for every instance of peak limiting (which was often enough to be quite audible). These induced harmonics during playback are eliminated by the above described two-step Audacity editing sequence, such that a much more natural sound without the artificially induced hard sounds put there exclusively via mastering can now be heard from the music tracks.

Needless to say, this album wouldn't be my first choice (or even last choice) to test the fidelity of my setup after making changes to it. The album's tracks can be made more enjoyable to listen to using the process described above, but note that once the harmonics of the peak amplitude cycles that were shaved off by the mastering person, they cannot by recovered.

• Johann Adam Reincken: Fuga g-moll played by B. Foucroulle on the Schnitger in Hamburg.

Nicolaus Bruhns*​

A very engaging selection from this album, in this case composed by Johann Adam Reinken (17th century Dutch organist), associated with both J.S. Bach (as an influencer to Bach) and Dieterich Buxtehude. I immensely like the thinned out sections of this composition for its inventiveness and refreshing sound quality on the particular organ used.

• Pachelbel: "Hexachordum Apollinis" by John Butt, the simplicity of the organ, the music and the fine playing makes everything stand out.

If you're a baroque organ fan (as I am), this is a delightful album: Pachelbel: Hexachordum Apollinis

 

[soundchaser]

Telarc Robert Shaw/ASO Stravinski's Firebird Suite 1919 plus some Alexander Borodin is great (SACD or LP)

I also like the XRCD sampler

And Rickie Lee Jones Chuck E's in Love

There are others but these leap to mind.
My dad is always stunned by Jazz at the Pawn Shop and how it brings the "club" into the listening room when I play it for him and he is on the listening couch.

 

[Havoc]

I recently picked up six (6) new-to-me CDs that diyAudio member Havoc suggested in an earlier posting in this thread (and thanks again for sharing your suggestions).

I'm glad you liked (some of) them. That 6 cd set you mentioned has some interesting stuff in it. I'm going to see if I can get a copy of that. I have a feeling we could talk organ music for hours over a nice drink 🙂

I admit that Padre Davide da Bergamo is a bit of an acquired taste 😀 Sorry about the more modern one being not to your taste, but I really love her work. Evaluating a system is also often listening to what you are familiar with because then variations show up.

My dad is always stunned by Jazz at the Pawn Shop and how it brings the "club" into the listening room when I play it for him and he is on the listening couch.

"I have one cd of "Jazz at the Pawnshop" (#3). That one and Jacques Loussier "the best of play Bach" are the only jazz cd's I can play from start to finish.

 

[Cask05]

Sorry about the more modern one being not to your taste, but I really love her work. Evaluating a system is also often listening to what you are familiar with because then variations show up.

No worries, I'm just not used to hearing a lot of 19th century organ music. My mother did her masters thesis on "César Franck's impact on the musical renaissance of nineteenth century France", so I should be able to sit and listen to a lot of 19th century organ music. It will just take a little more exposure. I was raised on JS Bach Preludes & Fugues

I have a feeling we could talk organ music for hours over a nice drink 🙂

Yep...

Chris