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Disks to demo your setup?


Chris A

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At the risk of sounding "pedestrian", Allison Krauss will do for female vocals, the Capitol release of the "Very Best of Jethro Tull" for some easy to follow vintage rock, and the "Baddest of George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers" for great, crystal clear foot stompin' music. Classical? Der Ring ohne Worte (The Ring) by the Berlin Philharmonic, or Carl Orff's Carmen Burana.

[H]

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DVD's for 5.1

Blue Man Group - The Complex Rock Tour Live

Bobby Rush - Live at Ground Zero Blues Club

Led Zeppelin - DVD

North Mississippi All Stars - Keep on Marchin'

Rodrigo & Gabriella

Norah Jones - Live in New Orleans

Dido - Live

Santana - Sacred Fire

CD's for 2.0

Joe Strummer - Global a Go-Go

Natalie Merchant - Motherland

Rhythm Country & Blues - Various Artists

Fleetwood Mac - Then Play On

A3 - Power in the Blood

Van Morrison - Live in San Francisco

Ray Lamantagne - Trouble

Citizen Cope - The Clarence Greenwood Recordings

Kermit Ruffins - Barbeque Singers Live

Maceo Parker - Life on Planet Groove

[:D]

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Stanton Moore, 'All Kooked Out'. Walloping drum-centric funky N'awlins free jazz, with Skerik and Charlie Hunter as a bonus. All takes were one shot, no over-dubs or production gimmickry. From the same sessions that produced Garage a Trois 'Mysteryfunk', which also rocks yet is completely different.

Not many speakers can do those drums properly, but for Klipsch it's a walk in the park.

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I pretty much have a pitiful unorganized music collection. I have no "go to" reference music as you guys are listing. NONE......I have different TEST CDs. To be clear, I have some of the very same CDs you all mention..............I couldn't tell you where any of them are though. They are on a shelf of CDs somewhere in the haystack.

I just play the music I like to listen to regardless of the recording quality. In fact, most of the stuff I listen to is live concerts and festival music that isn't recorded anywhere near as nicely as what's been mentioned in this thread. I'm happy with the sound of all that to death on my MCM Grand setup.

Mark,

I sympathize! My classical collection is organized in the ONLY way I can remember -- by record label and then alphabetically by composer. It works for me, but NO one else has ever liked this idea!

But my "pop" records are scattered -- I only cluster them by performer, haven't tried to alphabetize them, and pop has many, non-memorable record brands. I probably have far fewer non-classical albums than you do, so it's simpler for me.

Of course, alphabetizing by title is hopeless. Classical will alphabetize if there's only one composer on a disc, but I have to cluster discs/LPs in a separate section if each has several composers and/or works.

I think you have to choose a method that you KNOW will work for you. Do you have a search function on the hard drive?

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What, nobody mentioned Rickie Lee Jones self-titled album from 1979? It sounds great, with lots of multi-layered percussion and a big team of great musicians, all well-recorded. CD and LP are both very good.

Stevie Ray Vaughn's Couldn't Stand the Weather is also really good, especially the song Tin Pan Alley. Turn up the volume and your listeners will really take notice.

A more obscure LP is A Tale of Two Legs, by Bob's Your Uncle, Sook-Yin Lee's band from the '80s. It has some real "the band is in your room" moments.

The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots has some good stuff, especially All We Have is Now, with some low-level vocals that are hard to hear unless your system can really retrieve detail. When I make a change to the system, that's one of the first songs I listen to, since improvements in clarity are easy to pick out.

The Buggles The Age of Plastic is another favourite.

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There are a number of things I like to listen to when I am tweaking the system or trying something new:

Anne-Sophie Mutter playing Vivaldi Four Seasons (DG) A somewhat aggressive interpretation that annoys my violinist wife (Half the fun!) but nicely recorded.

Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi (1998 Re-recording) Nice organ and very low vocals at the beginning, I want to hear the Tibetan monks raw vocal cords and the room resonate, also has a large dynamic range.

Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full, the track Gratitude for piano and voice.

Pink Floyd, The Wall, disc two There is a lot of small background stuff.

Kate Bush, Lionheart, track Oh England... It is fun to listen how well the male vocal harmonies come out.

Vangelis, Blade runner soundtrack Just like the score.

I am a professional musician and am also lucky enough to have access to very good live recordings of the orchestra I play in. I know what the orchestra sounds like first hand so it is easy to tell if something is changing the color of the instruments so these can be useful as well.

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...About 6 months ago I was GIVEN a giant hard drive with a new computer purchase that has over 30,000 lossless songs of all genres on it.

Was this a prepackaged drive or did the place you purchased the computer from put it together? I guess the real question is, can I buy this somewhere?

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My DVD-Audio Demo Songs:

Talking Heads DVD-A: Burnin down the House (remix) Take me to the River, Houses in Motion,

T-Rex DVD-A Bang a gong

REM DVD-A:E bow the letter, Drive

Alice Cooper DVD-A Generation Landslide, I love the dead, Welcome to my Nightmare

Steely Dan DVD-A Babylon Sisters, Gaucho, Cousin Dupree,

Donald Fagan DVD-A I.G.Y. New Frontier, Morph the cat

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  • 4 months later...

I was surprised to not see any Angus and Julia Stone.

John Butler, Jaco Pastorious, Stanley Clark live, Enya, Paganini, or Jordi Savall.

But the Kunzel 1812 and Steely Dan are great auditioning discs. I have alot as you can see from the artists listed. I usually listen to new speakers for about 5-6 hours. Last set of speakers I bought many years ago before I moved to Australia where the Paradigm Studio 20s. My friend and salesman said they just got the speakers in and I should break them in for them. So like always I through some of my discs in and had fun.

Butg now BR DVD audio is out and not I need to update.

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  • 1 month later...

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