Music to evaluate Speakers and System

General:

I agree with others. Use something you've listened to a hundred times or more.

Specific:

Timbre,an a capella choir. The Robert Shaw Chorale comes to mind. Human voices are the most complex things to reproduce.Second choice,a string quartet.

Imaging,the last movement of Mozart Symphony #41. Can you follow all four horizontal/contapuntal lines, playing at the same time,without the speakers getting in the way?

Dynamic Range,Use a piece of music for which you have a written score. Look at the dynamic markings. ff is 100db,f is 90db, mf is 80 db,mp is 70db,p is 60db, pp is 50 db.

Find a ff passage and set the volume so your SPL meter is 100;keep the volume setting there and play a pp passage It should be 50,if it is more,you know how compressed the dynamic range is. Then do the same in reverse,set a pp at fifty,play a ff and see how close to 100 it is.

Range extreme,treble. Anything with a half stopped violin.

Range extreme,bass. Anything from the JS Bach Organbuken.

I know that is over the top,but there it is.

Female Jazz is fine but that music sounds good on almost any speaker, I swear some must love the format simply because it makes them feel good about the gear they own.
You only need to bring what you like and are familiar with to decide what you like.

I disagree that one should use whatever one likes.

That is not what I or anyone else said. We emphasized that the recordings need to be familiar but no one said that they should be restricted to a single type or genre.

A system should play everything well unless one is happy to predispose what one can play and enjoy to one genre or another.

Agreed.

Kal

I would agree to bring a poor sounding recording to see how the speakers will play new music, Rock and Pop are some of the worst offenders so beware of how a speaker handles this music if you enjoy it.

There are obviously many fine recordings to demo a system, but my favorite 3 are:

Patricia Barber Cafe Blue LP
Weather Report Weather Report LP (the blue one with red letters)
Bruce Katz Band Transformation