Music tracks for tweaking


I have monitors and powered subs with built-in cross-overs. After burning-in new speaker cable, the cross-over point needed to be adjusted. There’s a clean kickdrum solo opening “I’m So Aftraid” on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dance’ CD. These few beats were great for dialing in the cross-over point and volume. Now, the kickdrum sounds tight & resonant w/o being wooly. This adjustment seems to work pretty well across-the-board for all music.

What other music tracks might you recommend for tweaking - whether it be midrange, high or low frequency? Also, what hidden musical cues within songs have you discovered. One example might be is a certain percussive note a bell or a triangle. With Tidal’s vast library, there’s opportunity to see how resolving our system’s are.

steakster
I pick three albums of different types of music to come up with the best balance for a system.

David Pritchard
nmmusicman: Steely Dan - excellent suggestion. 

My latest reference point is Sarah Gazarek’s "You Got By’. She is close-miked in a booth. On my system, in the opening phrasing, her voice seemed a bit too strident, fatiguing. It is most unlikely that the recording engineer allowed it to be released like that. With a cable-swap, she sounded sweet and airy. But, then had to go back to the "I’m So Afraid" to see what happened down in the bass region. Ha!
" Any track off of Steely Dan Two Against Nature."

I have to agree totally.  This became one of my top reference CD's and propelled me to buy the Aja CD on Amazon which came with a free Aja download.  Both CD's really do give my system(s) a great workout.

Bill