Music to evaluate Speakers and System

Another stress test is this:

Erich Kunzel & The Cincinnati Pops - Very Best of Erich Kunzel: Top 20. Lots of variety and almost all of it dynamic.

Here's a link to an article on the Audio Note website. I found it very helpful in evaluating different pieces of equipment. It's definitely worth a read. Good luck in your quest.

http://www.audionote.co.uk/articles/art_audio_hell.shtml

it is not possible to "know" the sound of a recording.

having listened to a recording many times does not achiev knowledge.

it is not necessary to be familiar with a recording to detect a sonic signature.

selecting a variety of recordings and genres is sufficient to evaluate speakers and stereo systems.

even if you have never listened to a cd before it does not disqualify it to be used to evaluate speakers and stereo systems.

since recordings sound different, the chances that say, 5 recordings will have the same "errors", i.e., frequency response imbalances, etc., is remote.

"Body Acoustic"
David Chesky

For imaging and soundstage.

Mrtennis-

When making evaluations with more than one unknown parameter, e.g., new speaker and new recording in a new system/room, one cannot determine what accounts for all the discovered sound differences. It is a mathematical/logical impossibility.

Even if you play 5 different (unfamiliar CDs) and they share the same characteristic, you can only ascribe that characteristic to the system if you know (and you don't, of course) that those recordings do not, in fact, share that characteristic.

Kal