I read it was in some of the bass guitar recordings stems only, for whatever reason, and wasn’t intentional. Who. Knows.
At least it isn’t Death Magnetic bad…
Here’s something special from Steve Smith-
http://stevesmithdrumart.com
I have 5 of the above collection, plus the book with the vinyl. In order to ensure that his movements are efficient, Steve used to darken the room and use lighted drumsticks. One of his friends was a photographer, and they started to capture the result in time-lapse photography.
Many people think of him as the drummer from Journey. In truth, he’s one of the top Jazz and world drummers that ever lived. Listen to some of his jazz work with his group Vital Information, or his Indian influenced drumming on George Brooks’ Summit with Zakir Hussain, Fareed Haque and Kai Eckhardt.
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Death Magnetic is one of the absolute worst music recordings I’ve ever heard. For me, the fidelity is so bad that the music is absolutely unlistenable.
If anything is compared to DM’s fidelity it must be so bad. Lol
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Absolutely wonderful post. Fear Innoculum is a beast of a recording. Very impactful and punchy especially as you said with the drums.
It is that bob Ludwig mastering that seals the deal. 
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I will definitely check Steve Smith out. He’s a prime example of what I meant above:
I like the art too. Reminds me of Picasso’s light drawings.
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Great drumming, but the recording of the drums… not so much IMHO. I just listened to the title track off of Lateralus and while it is my favorite song of all time, the drums sound completely dead compared to any track off of Fear Inoculum. The kick drums are especially bad. They sound like they are stuffed with pillows, which is a common thing for drummers to do but something Carey never does.
Sometimes I feel like the recording engineers don’t pay any attention to the timbre of drums because they are not a melodic instrument. There is a lot more to the sound of a drum than the initial strike.
Here is my 50 track, 3+ hour headphone evaluation playlist. I don’t generally write full reviews and focus on music over equipment. I seek an accurate presentation of music that lets me forget about the hardware. This list is oriented toward evaluating presentation, the suitability of a setup for different genres, and assessing fatigue. Fatigue is a big issue for me, and many of my purchases were driven in a quest to be able to listen all day without ringing or unpleasantness.
These are TEST AND EVALUATION tracks. I don’t like some of the songs or genres, but they are good for a narrow purpose. Some tracks are the flavor of the day and will eventually be swapped for others, but they provide variety to avoid boredom.
Given the goal of minimizing fatigue over long sessions, the playlist has a logical order:
- The first 10 tracks should sound reasonably good on any setup. If not, then there’s a big issue somewhere. These are mild, mainstream productions.
- Tracks 11-13 highlight the impact of the Loudness Wars era and should all be easy to bear…#12 Californication isn’t easy for me…
- Tracks 14-34 span different genres and technical productions. This includes percussion, deep bass, panning, spatializing, overdubs, and other studio tricks (if not for being overplayed, one could substitute Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Beach Boys, etc.). None of these tracks cause me much fatigue.
- Tracks 35-50 can cause fatigue with some setups, and some have caused fatigue/tinnitus with everything I’ve ever tried. This could be idiosyncratic (for me alone), or there could be a miracle setup that works for everything and everyone. Most of the tracks in this section have high-end shrillness or some sort of distortion.
| Index | Song | Album | Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | Little Earthquakes | Tori Amos | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 2 | Don’t Know Why | Come Away With Me | Norah Jones | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 3 | Close To You | Gold – Greatest Hits | Carpenters | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 4 | Savior (piano version) | MassEducation | St. Vincent | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 5 | Desperado (2013 Remaster) | Desperado (2013 Remaster) | Eagles | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 6 | The Girl From Ipanema | Sinatra/Jobim | Antonio Carlos Jobim | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 7 | Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes | Graceland | Paul Simon | Smooth production should be fine on any system. Problems here indicate big issues! |
| 8 | Sun Giant | Sun Giant EP | Fleet Foxes | Insane layers of vocal echoes get muddy and lost with less resolving systems |
| 9 | Riptide | Dream Your Life Away | Vance Joy | Acoustic ukulele intro good for nuances in volume and air of recording (45 seconds) |
| 10 | Tamacun (Remastered) | Rodrigo Y Gabriela | Rodrigo Y Gabriela | Acoustic guitars flattened in the Loudness Wars: How well do they hold up? |
| 11 | I Hung My Head | American IV | Johnny Cash | Vocals flattened in the Loudness Wars: How well does it hold up? |
| 12 | Californication | Californication | Red Hot Chili Peppers | Vocals BUTCHERED in the Loudness Wars: Can any hardware save it? |
| 13 | Levi Stubbs’ Tears | Must I Paint You a Picture? | Billy Bragg | Pre-Loudness Wars forward vocals: Compare to prior tracks [Note strong UK accent] |
| 14 | Crazy Rhythm | The Beat Of My Heart | Tony Bennett | Vocals on right side, but resolving setups reveal clear ghostly echoes of the words on the left |
| 15 | Just One Of Those Things | The Beat Of My Heart | Tony Bennett | Jazz percussion and cymbals from 1957 – production techniques of an earlier era |
| 16 | BirdFlu | Kala | M.I.A. | Intense 2007 studio percussion |
| 17 | Islands | XX | The XX | Deep bass, really deep bass and more musical than the “Why So Serious?” track |
| 18 | WAKING UP DOWN | WHAT WE DREW | Yaeji | Contemporary heavy bass / club sound |
| 19 | Blood In The Cut | Every Where Is Some Where | K.Flay | Contemporary heavy bass / club sound |
| 20 | Bizarre Love Triangle | Brotherhood | New Order | Landmark in production methods: How does potentially brittle 1980s music sound with setup? |
| 21 | Break-Thru | Lamp Lit Prose | Dirty Projectors | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 22 | Donna | Sun Machine | Rubblebucket | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 23 | My Girls | Merriweather Post Pavilion | Animal Collective | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 24 | What’s That Perfume That You Wear? | Life Will See You Now | Jens Lekman | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 25 | Empire Ants (feat. Little Dragon) | Plastic Beach | Gorillaz | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 26 | Souk Eye | The Now Now | Gorillaz | Listen to the last minute: How long before the chimes fade away? [Varies by setup] |
| 27 | Let Down | OK Computer | Radiohead | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 28 | Time to Pretend | Oracular Spectacular | MGMT | Studio musicians spending a lot of time on mixing, staging, and effects (alt example) |
| 29 | Sultans of Swing | Sultans of Swing – the Very Best of Dire Straits | Dire Straits | Baseline expectations for Rock ‘n’ Roll: Guitar by an expert |
| 30 | Pride and Joy | The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan | Stevie Ray Vaughan | Baseline expectations for Rock ‘n’ Roll: Guitar by an expert |
| 31 | Flight of The Bumblebee | The Greatest Classical Masterpieces! | London Philharmonic Orchestra | Classical: Dynamics, clarity, strings, brass and harshness or hiss [Nostalgia: School field trip] |
| 32 | The Ride Of The Valkyries | Wagner – Ride Of The Valkyries | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra | Classical: Dynamics, clarity, strings, brass and harshness or hiss [Nostalgia: School field trip] |
| 33 | Rhapsody in Blue | Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue & An American in Paris | Leonard Bernstein | This track is iconic, and provides good examples of orchestral and piano content |
| 34 | No Rest for the Wicked | World on Fire | Yngwie J Malmsteen | Technical heavy metal – contemporary update to the soul of classical and a check for clarity |
| 35 | Lovefool | First Band On The Moon | The Cardigans | Sharp and chipper female pop: Can be sibalant, too bright, and painful with some setups |
| 36 | Go Outside | Cults | Cults | Sharp and chipper female pop: Can be sibalant, too bright, and painful with some setups |
| 37 | You Don’t Get Me High Anymore | Three | Phantogram | Sharp and chipper female pop: Can be sibalant, too bright, and painful with some setups |
| 38 | Steve Jobs | Wonderland | Steve Aoki feat. Angger Dimas | EDM that can be harsh or unpleasant (starting at 1:30); compare with next two tracks |
| 39 | All The Time | Bahamas Is Afie | Bahamas | Melodic but heavy guitar distortion; compare with prior and next track |
| 40 | Little Cream Soda | Icky Thump | The White Stripes | Extreme guitar distortion and quasi-heavy metal; compare with prior two tracks |
| 41 | Du Hast | Sensucht | Rammstein | Mainstream metal production – baseline for genre and should perform well |
| 42 | Walk | Vulgar Display of Power | Pantera | Mainstream metal production – baseline for genre and should perform well |
| 43 | Crown On The Ground | Treats | Sleigh Bells | The absurd level of constant distortion can reveal dynamic issues and limitations of amps |
| 44 | The Queen And The Soldier (Live) | RetroSpective | Suzanne Vega | Listen for (a) clear background crowd noise, and (b) fluctuating volume of voice [Varies by setup] |
| 45 | Woman On The Tier | RetroSpective | Suzanne Vega | Novel percussion using trash cans sometimes induces tinnitus, weirdness, or unpleasantness |
| 46 | This Devil’s Workday | Good News For People Who Love Bad News | Modest Mouse | Bright and brassy – unpleasant with many setups (Ow, this entire album is so bright it hurts!) |
| 47 | Leave Your Body Behind You | Standing At The Sky’s Edge | Richard Hawley | Underlying distortion can induce hiss and make the presentation fall apart [varies by setup] |
| 48 | Answering Machine | Let It Be | The Replacements | Cheap studio equipment and a shrill high end often induces tinnitus |
| 49 | You Really Got Me (2015 Remaster) | Van Halen (Remastered) | Van Halen | Shrill around 0:30, 1:00 and elsewhere – extremely high pitched tones induce tinnitus |
| 50 | Soon | Loveless | My Bloody Valentine | Entire album is more noise than music: known to lead to tinnitus in creator Kevin Shields |
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I can tell this is the culmination of a lot of effort. A simple Like is not sufficient. Thank you! This kind of dedication is the reason I came to this forum. It will take me a long time to digest this but I intend to.
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Yes! I’m listening to Visions as I type this.
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Dude. Well done. Thank you so much for sharing this. Cool list. Fun to learn what others like in the world of sonics.
One thing I will quickly agree with you on and that is Californication on CD is absolutely unlistenable. At least for me. Stupid recording. Loudest of 1999 and that is not a good thing.
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I have bookmarked this post, will make a playlist, and step in your ear canals (ew?)! Thank you for this!
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It’s great that you give notes on why you use a track and what you are looking for.
Without the notes it’s like “Ok, I just listened but what did it tell me?”.
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Great work @generic, thanks for sharing!!
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Well you could have at least linked the songs to Tidal or whatever… 
Tremendous effort, gonna try a couple of these out, see if your brightness section makes me ears bleed!
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I can see this one turning in to a competition. I know what I got at my regular listening volume but I aint telling.
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Thanks.
Some of the members here go down the audio equipment rabbit hole, and constantly try new headphones, new amps, new DACs, etc. I go down the musical content rabbit hole. I first used parts of this playlist back in the 1990s, and it naturally built over time. This list could swap-in a lot more options too – this is just what I’ve been using recently.
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| Song | Artist | Producer / Mix Engineer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frida | Holy Holy | Holy Holy | How articulate is the bass guitar? How sibilant are the vocals? How wide is the soundstage? How clearly are the vocal effects coming across? This is a pretty dense mix. It’s okay if it sounds it. |
| Fuity | Rubblebucket | Claudius Mittendorfer | What does the kick sound like? Can I hear the sub bass on the kick? Can I hear the dusty airy top of the kick drum? The bass synth on this track is super wide which is unusual / untraditional - how is that coming across? How is the stereo brass coming across? Is the vocal sibilant? The vocal should be somewhere between “almost too sibilant” to “a little too sibilant.” |
| Terminal Paradise | Big Thief | Andrew Sarlo / Dom Monks | The acoustic guitar sounds like it was recorded with two mics that were slightly out of phase. Vocal reverb is a super subtle narrow plate reverb. Can I hear it or is it being masked? Are the acoustic guitar noodles during the chorus getting in the way of the lead vocal? Those should be nice and wide surrounding the center image but not coming close to it. |
| Eat Your Heart Out | Hungry Kids of Hungary | Matt Redlich | Slap back delay from the intro guitar on the left should be obvious on the right. How far apart are the original guitar and the delay signal? Can I separate the harmonies from the melody? Does all of the reverb sound like an immersive space or does it sound like information? |
| Mythological Beauty | Big Thief | Andrew Sarlo | I use this song for the first 10 seconds. Every speaker/room/headphone has a different take on the sub bass content in the intro. I want to be able to hear and differentiate between the kick drum hits and the sound/feeling of the room filling up or “blooming” with subsequent reflections. In a lot of cases, the room is the sound. |
| Half Acres | Louis Prince | Micah Tawlks | This is such a tasteful mix. It’s hard to screw this up. Can I feel the kick drum impact? Can I hear that the vocal is doubled left and right? Is the snare nice and solid in it’s own space in the center? Are the harmonies nice and wide? |
| Mourning Sound | Grizzly Bear | Shawn Everett | It’s super easy to screw this up - especially the vocal which is already verging on being a little too warm. In fact, if the vocal doesn’t sound nice and warm (possibly too warm) I know something is wrong / I know I’m missing some low mids. This is not a dynamic mix either. It’s LOUD! It should be loud compared to the average mix. It should be SO LOUD that it is a little exhausting to listen to all the way through. And yet the drums still have a really satisfying smack and every part in the arrangement seems to have it’s own little area in the soundstage to do it’s thing. Like a lot of Shawn Everett mixes, I either have to turn the volume down a little, or bail half way through to avoid worrying that I might be f****** up my ears. Shawn Everett also mixed (and won the grammy for mixing) Alabama Shakes’ 2015 record “Sound & Color” … It will be super obvious that it’s the same engineer if you listen for it. That record is also obscenely loud but I think it works better because there’s less going on per arrangement. People think loudness comes from mastering. It doesn’t. It comes from Shawn. |
| SYWD | Husky | Matt Redlich | This is another case of - easy to get it wrong. Same thing as the previous song with a vocal that is really nice and warm. In an untreated room, that vocal will often go into ‘too warm’ territory. Once the vocal is too warm it’s hard to hear what the bass guitar is doing. A whole domino procession of masking ensues. In the big string section choruses, I can feel (or imagine feeling) that the tape is saturating and compressing everything a little bit. That’s okay because it feels great. I still want to be able to hear where the vocals end and the strings begin. |
| I Give Up | Caroline Polachek | John Congelton | This is a beautiful execution of compression on everything! The distress that the compression is imparting on everything with it’s slow attack and fast release totally nails the emotion of the song. I think this is a great example of mixing taking a composition to a higher level. I’m really just looking for that sense of urgency on this one. |
| Surprise | Camp Howard | Adrian Olsen | Everything in this mix should KNOCK - especially the low end. |
| Halloween | Phoebe Bridgers | Tony Berg / Mike Mogis | This whole album is SO dark. There’s a whole scene in LA right now that’s doing this. The team is Tony Berg, Blake Mills, Ethan Gruska, Phoebe Bridgers etc… I have wondered if it’s because they’re super into mixing on NS10s, which are super bright, or if it’s another kind of artistic statement - as if to say, we can create the best music of our time without any of the typical (and superfluous) high frequency ear candy associated with non-classical music. Regardless… I think it’s amazing. I think it’s especially brave because a lot of these mixes are simply not going to translate everywhere you normally hope they will as an engineer. They’re going to sound confused on tinny super market speakers. They’re going to sound underwhelming out of an iPhone. But I get the sense that they don’t care. They aren’t making music for you to hear in passing. They’re making music for you to listen to. Anyways - what I’m looking for here is whether or not I can hear the articulation of both baritone-guitar-sounding rhythm instruments that are improvising on the far left and right throughout the song. |
NOTES:
- I’m an audio engineer / music producer. Sorry for any typos!
- I included producers because I know how important producers/mixers are to the way an album sounds. Producers have their own styles and you’ll start to recognize a producer’s signature sound the same way you recognize an artist’s signature composition style as soon as it’s something you’re listening for. Let’s normalize glorifying producers!
- I recognize that all listening is subjective. I’ve only posted what I look for in these songs. There is no objectivity in audio. Two people will hear the same thing differently because of things as trivial as the shape/size of their ears or as random as - that one time they played with their friend’s analog synthesizer and ~something~ just clicked …
- I picked these songs because I love them and because I think they sound great. There’s plenty of music that sounds great that I can’t stand. There’s also lots of music I love that sounds horrible (to me). Part of what I’m looking for in testing a headphone/speaker with these songs (and the rest of my reference playlist) is whether or not I can enjoy the things I usually enjoy. Is it all too analytical? Is the ridiculous soundstage making my favorite song sound disjointed like it’s under scrutiny rather than cohesive like a performance for enjoyment? Is the opposite true?
- Here’s a playlist with all of these songs and a bunch more. The playlist is always evolving so check back later for more.
- Thanks for reading! If you have any music suggestions based on the above I’d love to hear them! Especially if they sound good : ]
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Steely Dan - Aja
David Crosby - Laughing
Hoist - The Planets 'Mars"
Tracy Champan - Crossroads
Dire Straits - You and Your Friend
Nickel Creek - Self Titled Album
Doors - Riders on The Storm
Pat Metheny - Full Circle
Jesse Cook - Cancian Trisle
Stevie Ray Vaughn - Tin Pan Alley
Billy Idol - Prodigal Blues
Carmen Comes - Sings The Blues
Andre Heuvelman - After Silence
High End Audiophile Test Demo CD
The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
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Thank you so much for this post!
I went through this playlist last night while reading through your explanations-- lovely and informative. You even new banded me a couple of times.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute! You can’t post a huge evaluation playlist right now! I haven’t gotten through @generic’s evaluation playlist yet! 
But seriously, thank you. I will definitely check these out!
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