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Critical (Best) Music Tracks for Speaker and Room EQ Testing

Gringoaudio1

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Dynamics? You are aware that most modern electronic pop & electronica is heavily dynamically compressed? The album you recommend has a DR14 average of 8, which is pitiful. Though apparently one of its tracks rates an 11, which is decent. If you want to experience real dynamics, try Brad Dutz & Chris Wabich album Drums and Bells, which has a DR14 average of 20 and peak of 29. It's also a fantastic album for critical evaluation of audio equipment.
Listening to Brad Dutz and Chris Wabich fulfills the classic audiophile cliche of using music to listen to your system.
 

MRC01

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DR doesn't really acuratly tell how dynamic a song is. it could have a lot of quiet passages but have loud parts crushed to hell and would have a good reading.
this is real dynamics to me ...
I agree, that example is highly dynamic. I found the original on Qobuz and it sounds great.
BTW, it also has high DR14 numbers: DR18.
 

_thelaughingman

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Here’s another one of A R Rahman’s creation’s. I use this specific track for time alignment of speakers and subwoofer. It is available in Hi-res on Apple Music at 24bit/96khz, so it should be a similar hi res format on other services.
 

ferrellms

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Dynamics? You are aware that most modern electronic pop & electronica is heavily dynamically compressed? The album you recommend has a DR14 average of 8, which is pitiful. Though apparently one of its tracks rates an 11, which is decent. If you want to experience real dynamics, try Brad Dutz & Chris Wabich album Drums and Bells, which has a DR14 average of 20 and peak of 29. It's also a fantastic album for critical evaluation of audio equipment.
Not all of it is compressed - while it rarely has the dynamic range over all of a recording of orchestral music (it is pop music), it will certainly knock you out of seat with sudden, loud, floor-shaking bass from a dead-silent background and immediately going silent again. Sustained synth bass will be louder, deeper, and clearer and more impactful than acoustic instruments. Artificial reverb will be more enveloping and interesting. Unheard-of timbres will abound. This kind of music begs for hi-fi!

Listen to "Sparks" again.
 
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dasdoing

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I agree. I like to put something like Sevenn (loudly) to avaliate a system. Not only, obviously. this is not music I will be listening too, but reveals a lot of what a system is capable
 

MRC01

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If you're looking for tracks that test frequency response with extended bass and treble, almost anything from Entheogenic is great. Also the bass goes super deep and it also has articulation which highlights spectral decay - without clean fast CSD it sounds bloated/muddy.
Of course, like most electronic music, it doesn't have much dynamic range.
 

dasdoing

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speaking of dynamics. Dan Worrall's "protest song" might be a good test, too lol


I kind of like the track lol. I am on an old laptop today and tried to destroy my speakers. no way. no sure how it would break anything anyways. Only thing that could break is a tweeter if there was white noise-ish sound up there near or at 0DbFS no? and there is not much going on up there.
I kind of want to try it on my PA speakers. in theory they should protect themselfs as they have overload protection
 

MediumRare

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Today I heard the best recording I have ever heard. Drums & Bells, Comparing Sticks by Brad Dutz & Chris Wabich.
Absolutely jaw-dropping incredibly lifelike sound. No compression, incredible dynamic range, full spectrum captured from the timbre & attack of the lowest bass drum to the endless HF extension and incredibly fast yet silky smooth transients of the brushes & stick hits. Not a hint of artificial HiFi enhancement, just completely and effortlessly natural and transparent.
I have several of the Harman recommended tracks, and they are very good, but this is in a whole different league.
I am out of adjectives! Has anyone else listened to this? What do you think?
Is this on Spotify, I couldn't find it. :(
 

Gringoaudio1

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Is this on Spotify, I couldn't find it. :(
This is the only one with those two artists I could find on Spotify. Pretty amazing recording.
 

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MRC01

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Listening to Drums & Bells, Comparing Sticks by Brad Dutz & Chris Wabich on Spotify defeats the purpose. Look for a full quality lossless version of it. I've only ever seen it on CD.
 

AdamG

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What a track! Almost fell of my listening chair cranking it up too loud from the soft start☺️interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Agreed. At first I thought something was wrong with only sound from left channel. Then the Drums…….Great system demo track.
 

dualazmak

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Even though I appreciate each of your single track or single album suggestions for "Critical (Best) Music Tracks for Speaker and Room EQ Testing", now I feel amirm or any of you all on this thread would be better to start new thread entitled for example "Critical (Best) Music Track Playlist for Speaker and Room EQ Testing".

As MRC01 kindly and clearly indicated in his post #255, and as I agreed him in my post #258, we "need different musical sources" which would serve as reference for our audio system and room acoustics; no single music track could work for this.

I believe we need suitable "playlist" for subjective and objective check and tuning of our audio system and room acoustics, and such "playlist" would better to be built under persistent/consistent concept and/or policy.

As I shared in my post #205, I have already tried building such an audio reference "playlist" on my project thread...
 
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Danaxus

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Even though I appreciate each of your single track or single album suggestions for "Critical (Best) Music Tracks for Speaker and Room EQ Testing", now I feel amirm or any of you all on this thread would be better to start new thread entitled for example "Critical (Best) Music Track Playlist for Speaker and Room EQ Testing".

As MRC01 kindly and clearly indicated in his post #255, and as I agreed him in my post #258, we "need different musical sources" which would serve as reference for our audio system and room acoustics; no single music track could work for this.

I believe we need suitable "playlist" for subjective and objective check and tuning of our audio system and room acoustics, and such "playlist" would better to be built under persistent concept and/or policy.

As I shared in my post #205, I have already tried to build such an audio reference "playlist" on my project thread...
Agreed. It might be helpful if people put together a public playlist in YouTube (or other service), and shared them here. Then anyone who wanted to use it, could look up the lossless tracks they care about, on their service of choice (i.e. Apple Music).
 

MediumRare

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Listening to Drums & Bells, Comparing Sticks by Brad Dutz & Chris Wabich on Spotify defeats the purpose. Look for a full quality lossless version of it. I've only ever seen it on CD.
Spotify in my area is 320kbit/s, soon to be Red Book quality. Are you sure you can hear the difference? In any case, I'd like to hear the CD before I decide buy it.
 
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