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Best song for immediate impact when presenting or testing?

I, as most of you, have my regular tunes that I play or listen to when trying out a new system or playing music for friends. My current starter is 'Feels like Rain' by Aaron Neville. It engages me immediately because I love it so, but it is also very well recorded and has a bass voice doing backup which in the right system has a real visceral impact.

I was at an Audio shop recently, listening to my standards, and wanted to show the sales consultant a piece that he might not have heard. I played 'Golden Rust' off the Miles Gurtu album. After about 30 seconds, he pulled out his device and added the song to his favorites. I asked why did he add so quickly, and he said that the opening electronica had a three dimensional stereophonic quality that made a remarkable impression right off the bat. I paraphrase lightly; that was his comment.

What pieces do you play of any genre that have an immediate impact, especially for people listening to a good system for the first time?
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kevdubbya's avatar
kevdubbya
4 posts
 
The intro to Money for Nothing by Dire Straits does it for me!
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
324 posts
 
I don't like to play for immediate impact. That is cheap and tawdry and right off the bat encourages people in all the basest aspects of listening. Of course this is what everyone does in demo's. Then they wonder why there are no women audiophiles, why so many constantly churn components (looking for the next immediate impact), why so few audiophiles have any real listening skills.

What I like to do instead is play something very simple and quiet like Springsteen Highway 29, just his familiar voice and guitar, or Doug MacLeod, or Linda Ronstadt (anything from her 3 albums with Nelson Riddle) the kind of thing that draws the listener in. Try it some time.

But does it impress? Oh yeah. One guy, his wife came up to me with this look of incredulity on her face, obviously emotionally moved, and what did she say? "I feel like I could listen to this all night!" Because instead of being barraged, aurally assaulted, she was actually drawn in and enjoying the music. She never even knew that was possible.

It is. Rare. Not easy. But definitely possible.
stargazer3's avatar
stargazer3
75 posts
 
For me there are many songs that have immediate impact, a lot of them are well recorded (eg. Dire Strait Songs, Pink Floyd,) so they will sound good on a very expensive system and equally sound good on an under £1000 system, so I purposefully do not use such songs to test the system.  However there are other pieces of music (Classical, Rock and other genre of music) which have immediate impact which are not so straight forward in recordings, or are slightly more complicated eg voices in a choir, ensemble where individuals sing different words overlapping each over.  Such recordings for me tells me a little more how the sytem in question copes with the recording. However there are to immediate impact songs I play to test system which are Dick Dale - Misirlou and Rolling Stones - Painted It Black.
roberjerman
2,086 posts
 
"The Unknown Soldier" from Weather Report's I Sing The Body Electric! 
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