I’m sure this must have been a topic here before but I was just watching a YouTube video by someone called Gabster in which he came up with his favourite quality tracks for demonstrating his Hi-Fi to the max. Here’s the list, mostly his suggestions but also some in the comments;
If you knew me now – Christel Alsos
After Midnight – Hanne Boel
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl – Muddy Waters
Seeya – Deadmaud, Colleen D’Agonisto
Jazz Variants – The O Zone Percussion Group
Crystal Ball – Carolin No
I Would Rather Go Blind – Pete Alderton
Another Life – Nadine Khouri
Dry My Tears – Anne Bisson
Trouble’s What You’re In – Fink
The Curse – Agnes Obel
Everything Is Free – Gillian Welch
Top Funnel – Ooyy
Sara K – Running Away From You
Be My Number Two – Joe Jackson
Kelly Sweet – Raincoat
Grace Majha – Kiss of Life
When She Wept – Sam Vloemans
Zhao Peng – The Moon Represents My Heart
Michael Hedges – Aerial Boundaries
Afro Swing (Album)
House of Mercy – Sarah Jarosz
Mama This One’s For You – Chantal Chamberland
Holding to the edge of night – Samantha Crain
Woodland Womp – Kalya Scintilla
Some of the tracks are not really to my test but overall it’s quite a nice selection, particularly if you like smoky, jazzy female vocals. I’ve included a Spotify playlist but I tested them out using Tidal to get the benefit of lossless audio.
Any other suggestions?
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/380STssta5yfuHKQ13GMP0?si=5dfb3162ecdd4b6f
moseleymoles says
These all sound very tasteful. I’m looking as well for excitement – handling the filthy sub-bass on this for example:
And the ridiculous builds, drops and dynamic changes in this. Does it make it sound like the most exciting track ever made? Which it could be..
This goes from singer-songwriter piano to absolute banger in about 30s, again lots for a hi-fi to handle:
And as a bit of a comedown this is my go-to track for any piece of kit testing. Vocals, organ, guitar, drums, bass, backing vocals, sax solo, even flute at the end – all are in perfect harmony.
dai says
As long as you don’t use compressed and poor quality YouTube videos to test your HiFi!
Mike_H says
That is particularly a problem with dub reggae clips. They just don’t sound right on YouTube.
Weather Report’s “Heavy Weather” is an album that will show up your system’s shortcomings.
The best of the Blue Note recordings from Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio. Particularly the RVG remasters from earlier this century. Thad Jones’ “April In Paris”, for example.
jazzjet says
Until now I’ve always used Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters” to test out new gear.
garyt says
I’ve recently been using these three tracks. They cover a reasonably wide range of musical styles (though granted, no ‘tasteful’ jazzy stuff), are fairly representative of the sort of stuff I listen to, and show how a system can handle dynamics, frequency extremes & ‘dense’ productions (Cardiacs track especially):
Farmer in the City by Scott Walker
Dirty Boy by Cardiacs
I Can’t Give Everything Away by The Dame
fitterstoke says
I might have posted these test tracks before: I used these three (and others) when I bought my current turntable in the 1980s, using valve pre/power amps and small speakers on stands, in free space.
Weather Report – Night Passage
Bowie – Golden Years
John Martyn – Certain Surprise
What I was looking for was “master tape” reality, realistic rendering of acoustic instruments (including percussion, upright bass and voice – as well as Rico’s trombone on the JM track) and a sense of space (played through the right system, Golden Years has a soundfield that you can almost walk around inside).
I still use these as test tracks – but more often on CD these days.
moseleymoles says
Anything from Station to Station is a great idea, again an album I know every nook and cranny of.
Tiggerlion says
The Harry Maslin mix, naturally.
moseleymoles says
Why not play for example Stay off the original mix, Maslin mix and Stage version and then compare notes.
Diddley Farquar says
My hifi finds Metal Machine Music a test, as do I. I think Steven Wilson’s Hand.Cannot.Erase would demonstrate what my system can do, likewise Jeff’s Blow By Blow. Very well made records if you want to hear all the sounds in all the right places. Not that I ever tested my equipment prior to purchase but I do appreciate those records with attention to detail over others.
Junglejim says
I like ‘The Sidewinder’ by Lee Morgan
‘Slave To The Rhythm’ by Grace Jones
‘You Want It Darker’ by Leonard Cohen
‘A Crack In The Universe’ by Wayne Kramer
‘Material Man’ by Gregory Isaacs
Tiggerlion says
Anything from Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, especially Giorgio Moroder after the point Giorgio stops talking.
Diddley Farquar says
👍
Lodestone of Wrongness says
The most sonically perfect album of all time is obviously Joni’s “Night Ride Home”. An album not to love, it has its flaws, but an album to revere in its capture of hi-fidelity perfection.
I leave it to someone else to say ..
“Mitchell’s vocals are “dried out”, in her words, in Mike Shipley and Dan Marnien’s mix, retaining their up-close immediacy as she nimbly vacillates between gravitas and playfulness, thickening the consonants and gliding through the vowels. The damage cigarettes had inflicted on her vocal cords actually works to her advantage, adding a brassy burnish to her explorations of the widening gulf between innocence and experience.
“Night Ride Home” opens the album like a breath of tropical air, with sampled chirping crickets keeping time, as Mitchell ecstatically recounts a scene from a Hawaiian vacation with Klein, driving back to their rental house after watching a Fourth of July fireworks display on the beach. “Everything looked so magical, even the white line on the highway,” she told the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Hilburn. “It was as if someone had sprinkled fairy dust all around.” The song, delivered by her lived-in, womanly alto and embellished by Bill Dillon’s pedal steel, subtly establishes the theme of Night Ride Home, a lustrous example of emotion experienced under a Van Gogh-vivid starry night, recollected in tranquility.”
Twang says
Aja – the Dan
Fly like an eagle – Steve Miller
Dark side of the moon – Floyd
Kind of blue – Miles
Uprising – Bob Marley
About covers it.
dai says
The Nightfly?
kev147 says
Yes! Always this one for me.
Ten Summoners Tales too.
kev147 says
Yes! Always this one for me.
Ten Summoners Tales too.
Junior Wells says
The go to back in the 70’s was Supertramp Crime of the Century esp Dreamer and Van McCoy the Hustle but those records were so well produced that any system sounded better. Should the test not be something that sounds crap on inferior system?
Notwithstanding the expected “ it will sound crap on any system “ retorts. I reckon Mahavishnu Orchestra Visions of Emerald Beyond and some Zappa. Black Market from Weather report for that bass.
Podicle says
Agree. We should be using ‘There’s a Riot Going On’ and ‘Raw Power’ to demonstrate hifi prowess. “I can hear layers of murk beneath the murk!”.
Most of these lists are just thinly-veiled exercises in taste signalling. The best test of a system is to listen at volume to something you know intimately. For me it would be Who’s Next, Ziggy, Astral Weeks, Presence or the afore-mentioned Riot.
Diddley Farquar says
Or in some cases, cool signalling.
fitterstoke says
Completely agree with Podicle – no point in listening to something that you don’t know well. I’ve been listening to my three favoured tracks (and the associated albums) on all kinds of systems for more than 40 years.
moseleymoles says
Completely agree. The Van track in particular I know every drum fill and instrument entry.
MC Escher says
Aja for the space, and Mezzanine for the bass.
Hon. mention to Nightclubbing by Grace Jones (esp Walking In The Rain)
Vulpes Vulpes says
Walking In The Rain – deffo. I recall my upstairs neighbour banging on the floor when I decided to show off the bass from my floorstanding Mission monsters using that track. Being in the basement flat meant they shook the entire house.
Milkybarnick says
Sure I read somewhere once that the first Rage Against the Machine Album is good for testing out hi-fi equipment, such is the production of it. Language might offend the neighbours if you have it too loud though.
fentonsteve says
That’s a good idea. Almost anything from that Amstrad stack system with a smoke-glass door upwards will sound half-decent playing the kind of well-recorded pedestrian jazz which forms much of the list above.
I’ve met a lot of Audiophiles in my time and many are the sort of person who will fast forward through the 1812 Overture to get to the cannons. I’ve never been entirely sure if they even like music.
What sorts the men from the boys is something really spiky. There’s a track on the second album by The Dawn Chorus which has a really busy chorus with really dense production, and the rest of the band join in on what can only be described as ‘backing shouting’. It takes some really decent kit to pull it apart without sounding like everything is going to go over a cliff at any moment. Unfortunately, the only time I’ve heard it sound really good was through a pair of massive PMC studio monitors (the kind I could stand up inside), which cost as much as my VW Golf. There’s absolutely no way I could accommodate a pair, even if I could afford them.
fitterstoke says
“LP12 owner slags off audiophiles shocker” – Eaglesham & Waterfoot Gazette headline…
fentonsteve says
Yeah, I know… I started with my mum’s 1963 Dansette, so I haven’t always been an music tech nerd.
It was my love of music which got me an education and a career in Electronics. I could design myself an amplifier, or engineer an album, unlike most of the people who hang around hi-fi shops.
fitterstoke says
This might have cropped up on previous threads.
“Audiophile” has become a pejorative term: but, given the opportunity, wouldn’t most people prefer to listen to their favourite music through something which enhances the experience? When I read some of the comments (and graphs!) over on Hoffman, I realise that I’m NOT an audiophile in that sense – doesn’t mean I’d swap my nice kit for a Dansette.
There was an element of inverted snobbery some decades ago (late 70s? Early 80s?) where, eg “a Motown single or Dr Feelgood played down an old phone sounds better than that Topographic Oceans crap played on a proper Hi-Fi”. Some might still agree with that – but it would be more about musical taste (and NME-type politics) than anything else. I’m not accusing you of any of this, Steve – but do you recognise it?
Out of interest, would you be satisfied to swap your LP12 and everything downstream of it for an Amstrad tower?
fentonsteve says
I once wrote an essay for my Music homework explaining how better hi-fi allows the listener to appreciate a wider variety of music. I also wrote one saying the first album by The Blue Nile would come to be seen, in years to come, as The Velvet Underground & Nico currently was (it was 1985 or so). One of these has come true, to a limited extent.
Having worked in consumer audio for most of my career, there are some right weirdos out there bothering the staff of hi-fi shops. If “Audiophile” is the pejorative, how about we call them “Hoffmanites” instead?
Having owned both an Amstrad tower and a LP12, no I would not.
fitterstoke says
”Having owned both an Amstrad tower and a LP12, no I would not (swap)”
Playing Devil’s Advocate for a moment: doesn’t that mean that you are, in fact, an audiophile? 😉
davebigpicture says
Currently trying to shift a pair of Nexo MSIVs which are about 5’ high. Flight cases and processors included
https://www.solarisnetwork.com/products/nexo/msiv
Freddy Steady says
16 Lovers Lane by The Go-betweens has a sonic sheen.
Steerpike says
Shelby Lynne’s Dustin Springfield tribute album ‘Just a Little Lovin’ is superb. You can hear a pin drop. But then it is produced by Phil Ramone.
MC Escher says
Oh yes. I think his LP’s (Paul SImon, Billy Joel etc) are among my favourite-sounding records.
seanioio says
Atmosphere by Joy Division is my go to track, swiftly (see what I did) followed up by Shake It Off by Taylor Swift.
Both are a good indicator of sound quality IMHO.
Mike_H says
Prefer the Russ Abbot original to that Joy Division cover version, myself.
fitterstoke says
Arf!
dai says
Wilco’s Kicking Television live album is another sonic marvel, sounds incredible on vinyl
Native says
The latest Arctic Monkeys album has some beautiful sounds, particularly the strings. There’s lovely space in all the tracks, you can hear every instrument clearly.
Steve Walsh says
Because quite a lot of the music I own is not brilliantly recorded, I have always included at least one “messy” sounding track when auditioning hi-fi. Lazy from Made In Japan (the Deluxe Edition) was probably the last example of this. Some expensive kit made it sound really terrible and was rejected in favour of something more sympathetic.
Twang says
Excellent point which I was going to make. Fabulous sounding records some good on anything. A good stereo makes average sounding records sound better too by not fogging everything up.
The key thing about auditioning speakers is to play music you are very familiar with – not necessarily beautifully recorded but you know how it should sound.
fitterstoke says
Fabulous sounding records (sound) good on anything.
Arguably, this might be true only for the first time, if you play them on a Crosley Cruiser. After that, you’ve damaged the grooves so badly that they’ll never sound good again.
Twang says
Penny sellotaped to the tone arm sorts that out no worries.
fitterstoke says
That’ll be an old penny, I assume…