12 of the best-produced recordings to test your speakers

[MeloManiac]

https://www.whathifi.com/features/best-produced-recordings-to-test-your-speakers

 

Interesting suggestions, IMHO. 

[willland]

Aja and Rumours were two I guessed before clicking and are my two go to for demoing my speakers.

 

Bill

[MC39693]

I might have guessed Gaucho... and Paul Simon Graceland.

[wetowne]

Thanks for posting this. I had never heard Jellyfish before, what a revelation. How did I miss this band? Wow!

[The Dude]

Thanks for sharing, there appears to be a little something for everyone. Toto and Stealy Dan have a great sound, The Dark Side of The Moon is always one of my go to. Going to have to check out the rest.

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[richieb]

Focusing toward labels rather than individual artists - it’s hard to go wrong with ECM and Telarc offerings.

[makos]

Some great productions on that list. When I audition audio equipment my "go to" CDs are DSOTM (of course), Cowboy Junkies: Trinity sessions, Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny's Beyond the Missouri Sky, and sometimes I'll add Aja or Rumours depending on my mood.

 

For in home Demos I turn to my vinyl  collection and selections can be all over the place depending upon what my focus is but Abbey Road and DSOTM are always included.

[geezin']

Die Straits self titled.

[JGT914]

Some of these lists include Chris Jones/Moonstruck just to get Long After You'e Gone.

[babadono]

Roxy Music "Avalon"

[Marvel]

While I have a vinyl copy of Rumours, I have always thought it was super compressed. Not something I would consider for using to 'test' your speakers.

[Marvel]

Van Morrison's "Moondance" would work far better for me. Excellent recording

[Fish]

So, here's 12 or so,  more,    Steely Dan, Everything Must Go, never heard any better quality...I have the dvd audio of Rumors, it's good and I'm no huge fan. Be Bop Deluxe, AXE Victim, Pat Travers, Power Trio #2, Most Dire Straits, Communique is great, Cry of Love, Brother, Dave Gilmour self titled,  Clapton Just one Night, one of the best recorded old live albums, Foreigner Live 78 Rainbow, some Free from songs of yesteryear, Joe Satriani self titled,  John Mellonhead, Whenever we Wanted, I don't even like hin but it's a good recording, Neil Diamond Live from the 60's several tracks, the Police Certifiable, 

[Shakeydeal]

+1 for Cry Of Love. Great band and great music.

 

 

[Bubo]

Anything with clear female vocals

 

The only thing I can compare to is

Does it sound like a natural female voice ?

 

Piano is a square wave generator, or as close as you will get in music, the leading edge should be crisp and powerful.

 

I keep ending up with a girl and a piano.......

 

Great White paper on speech intelligibility, mic mfg

https://www.dpamicrophones.com/mic-university/facts-about-speech-intelligibility

Important frequencies

The important frequencies in non-tonal (Western) languages are illustrated by the diagram below. Here, the frequency band around 2 kHz is the most important frequency range regarding perceived intelligibility. Most consonants are found in this frequency band.



A speech spectrum is either high-pass or low-pass filtered. Using an HP filter at 20 Hz (upper left) leaves the speech 100% understandable. (This is because the complete speech spectrum is there). An HP-filter cutting everything below 500 Hz still leaves the speech signal understandable. Even though most of the speech energy is cut out, the intelligibility is only reduced by 5%. However, applying a higher cut-off makes intelligibility drop.

The other way around, applying an LP-filter makes intelligibility drop very fast. When cutting at 1 kHz, the intelligibility is already less than 40%. It can be seen that the frequency range between 1 kHz and 4 kHz is of high importance for intelligibility.
 

 

[Bubo]

 

 

 

First performance

 

 

[joessportster]

I dont care for David at Common Sense Audio, But I must admit he offers up some good CD for listening. I have several of the recordings and to date they have all been excellent IMHO.  There are like 200 CD listed here:   https://www.commonsenseaudio.com/cd.html

[Bubo]

2 hours ago, joessportster said:

I dont care for David at Common Sense Audio, But I must admit he offers up some good CD for listening. I have several of the recordings and to date they have all been excellent IMHO.  There are like 200 CD listed here:   https://www.commonsenseaudio.com/cd.html

Great list judging by the ones I know

Thanks !

[JGT914]

 

production / mastering quality is right there with the best I have heard.

Edited April 29, 2021 by JGT914

[The Dude]

I need to start making an list of all these great artists to try. I used to worry that no longer listening to radio would result in me not trying new music. There is so much out there and thankfully due to threads like this I get to experience them.

Someone on the McIntosh Facebook page recommended a Latin Jazz female performer, it was a wonderful sound. But now I can't remember who it was and why the list is important.

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