Music to evaluate Speakers and System

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

Back in the day (1950s) "everyone knew" that speakers should be evaluated by playing loud organ music. 12 inch woofers were acceptable, but 15 inchers were best.

Nowadays a delicate female vocalist is the test signal. This reflects how audiophile priorities have changed.

Nowadays a delicate female vocalist is the test signal. This reflects how audiophile priorities have changed.

LOL...yeah that was my warning too but in those days Wives accepted big ugly boxes. Since the 80's we have been told that tall narrow elegant speakers with tincy wincy woofers are the best and now the wives will never let us go back to the kind of things The Who used....ahh the skill with which the industry has recognized the WAF marketing opportunity of tall and narrow speakers and they do indeed do a great job on female vocals...